I,,,. J Heat A4as.sTransfer. Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 415-416. 1987
PergamonJournalsLtd. Printedin Great Britain.

Professor Dr.-Ing. Dr.e.h. Ulrich Grigull
on his 75th birthdayULRICHGRIGULL celebrates
his 75th birthday on 12March 1987. His work in heat transfer spans morethan five decades. It was in 1935 when he became an
assistant to Ernst Schmidt at the chair of Technische
Wirmelehreof the Technische HochschuleDanzig.
This laboratory
enjoyed enormous renown for heattransfer and attracted students and young scientists
from other parts of Europe, such as Ernst Eckert whocame from Prague.
All fields of heat transfer were investigated:
nonsteady heat conduction,
for which a graphical differential method was developed ; thermal boundary
layers, for which the Schatten and Schlieren methods
were elaborated ; dropwise condensation; radiation
properties of surfaces ; properties of steam. The work
done in Danzig in those days provided in many cases
first insights into problems which still occupy ourminds today.
Ulrich Grigull became one of the first co-workers
of Ernst Schmidt in Braunschweig at the newly builtMotoreninstitutof the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt
fiir Luftfahrt in 1937. Here he designed a closed-loop
apparatus to study heat transfer in natural convection
with ammonia near its critical point. His first publication was-together
with E. Schmidt and E. Eckert-“Wlrmetransport
durch Fhissigkeiten
in derNahe ihres kritischen Zustands”(Heat transport byfluids in their near critical state) a paper which wasconsidered
importantenough to be translated
into
English in a post-war AAF Translation,
No. 527,
Air Material Command, Wright Field, Dayton. Thispaper formed the basis of the so-called ‘Schmidt cooling’ of gas-turbine blades proposed in 1942 in a secretreport (geheime Kommandosache,Schreiben 1055) tothe German Academy of Aeronautics. In present days’
light, this paper, showing that fluids near their criticalstate are extremely well suited for heat transport bynatural convection, can be considered a pioneer paper.
Applicationsof the principle are nowadays found in‘critical thermosyphon
heat pipes’ wherever heat has
to be withdrawn from locations difficult to reach or
to service. Only recently, it could be proven that alimiting factor of such thermosyphon
heat pipes iscondensation
heat transfer and that an equation proposed by Grigull more than 40 years ago in his doctoral thesis “Wlrmeiibergang
bei der Kondensation
mit turbulenter
Wasserhaut”(Heat transfer in turbulent film condensation)
allows one limiting boundary to be calculated.
During the war, Grigull served as an engineer andofficer with the Kriegsmarine;
after the war, hebecame consultant to a chemical and textile firm anddirector in an insulating firm. In 1953 he joined theengineering section of the Farbenfabriken
Bayer AG415

416

Professor

Dr.-lng.

Dr.e.h.

Ulrich Grigullin Leverkusen. In 1954 he completed the revised andheavily extended new edition of the book Grundgasetze der Wiirmeiibertrugung by Griiber/Erkfrom
1933.
In 1961, Ulrich Grigull became successor to Ernst
Schmidt on the Chair for Thermodynamics
at theTechnische Hochschule Mtinchen; a famous chairCarl von Linde, Moritz Schriiter,and Wilhelm
Nusselt held it before.
Wide-spanned
activities which surrounded
himfrom the very beginning of his career now characterized his research as Professor : the developmentof optical methods
for heat and mass transfer
measurements ; investigationof basic problems
incondensationand evaporation;
natural convection introughs, or in pressure vessels at near critical state, orwith exothermic wall reaction ; thermophysicalproperties of water vapour, or carbon dioxide ; heat transfer in a Lava1 nozzle ; measurementsof the JouleThomson coefficient of water and water vapour.
Wide-spanned
activities also characterized
his university life : in 1972 he was elected Rektor and in 1976
Presidentof the now TechnischeUniversitat
Mtinchen. He held this office until his retirement in1980.
Wide-spanned
activities again occupy the Emeritus
Grigull: he became President of the International
Assembly for Heat Transfer Conferences and President of the International
Centre for Heat and MassTransfer. Now, finally, he was able to follow his longpostponed interests in history and technical history inparticular : he went to the roots of thermodynamics.
His paper “Fahrenheit,a Pioneer of Exact Thermometry”(Heat Transfer 1986, Proc. 8th International Heat Transfer Conference, Vol. 1, p. S/18,Hemisphere, Washington, DC) takes us into the worldof the early eighteenth century, when heat, enthalpy
and temperature
were not distinguishedand Isaac
Newton called them all ‘calor’. In order to measure
this, there were such things as thermometers-using

on his 75th birthday

the same principle of liquid expansion as ours-andwell-renowned
scholars devoted wits and skill on
them. Making and calibrating these instruments was
the problem. The Florentine Academy was famous
for its thermometers,
but when the Academy had been
dissolved, such instruments
were made in various
places and were sold by travelling salesmen. Johann
Heinrich Lambert as late as 1779 complained in his
treatise “Pyrometrie oder vom Maage des Feuers undder Wlrme” (Pyrometry or the measure of fire andheat) :“Those people diverted greatly from the thoroughness practised by the Florentine
Academy in theproductionof their thermometers.
And consequently, complaints
arose everywherethat thethermometers
had no comprehensible
scale andthat they were by no means corresponding.”
Ulrich Grigull-one
could not think of him otherwise-performeda thorough investigation on Daniel
Gabriel Fahrenheit,
who was born in Danzig 301
years ago. In trips to Amsterdam,FlorenceandLondon, Grigull searched libraries and archives andhe compiled a detailed mosaic of Fahrenheit’s
and
his contemporaries’lives. From their biographies andreports he reconstructed
and analysed Fahrenheit’s
work and rediscovered his ‘trick’ (the ‘artificium’) to
produce corresponding
and accurate thermometers.
A great many honours
and awards have been
bestowed upon Ulrich Grigull as an outstanding
scientist. We also know him and esteem him as anengaged colleague and a helpful and understanding
doctoral father.
Last not least, Ulrich Grigull is a founding editorof our Journal. The editors and the world-wide heattransfer community submit their best wishes to Ulrich
Grigull, health and happiness to him and his family.
ERICH HAHNE