International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 44 (2001) 2995±2996

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Professor Ralph Greif on his 65th birthday

We are pleased to honor Professor Ralph Greif on
the occasion of his 65th birthday. Throughout his career, Dr. Greif has been a valued teacher, advisor, andmember of the Heat Transfer Community. Ralph Greifwas born on 28 November 1935 in New York. He grew
up in the Bronx and attended local schools for his primary and secondary education. For his collegiate work,Ralph Greif attended New York University where hereceived his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1956. He subsequently left for a two-year stay in
Los Angeles where he was a Sta Member at Hughes
Research Laboratories and a Hughes Fellow while attending the University of California, Los Angeles. Whileat UCLA he worked on boiling heat transfer. He received his M.S. in 1958 from UCLA. In that same year
he left the west coast for New England where he becamea Sta Member at Raytheon Research Laboratories inNew Bedford, Massachusetts. Before leaving for UCLA,Ralph had met his soon-to-be wife Judy and upon returning from California, they were married in 1958.
Ralph Greif began his Ph.D. work at Harvard University in the same year. He worked with Arthur Bryson
through his doctoral studies and performed gasdynamics
research on the free piston shock tube. In 1962, Dr. Greif
S0017-9310/01/ $ - see front matter
PII: S 0 0 1 7 - 9 3 1 0 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 5 6 - 4completed his Ph.D. and remained at Harvard as aResearch Fellow. He began his long-standing relationship with the University of California at Berkeley in1963 when he became an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering.
Over the last 37 years that Professor Greif has taught
and performed research at Berkeley, he has supervisedover 40 Ph.D. students and many more M.S. students ina wide range of areas. In addition to his role as a research advisor, he has always been an excellent classroom teacher. There was never a doubt from hisstudents that he genuinely cared about their understanding the subtleties of the material that he taught. In
recognition of his teaching contributions, he wasawarded a Tau Beta Pi, College of Engineering, Excellence in Teaching award in 1967 and a Pi Tau Sigma
Excellence in Teaching award in 1971.
As a researcher, Professor Greif has done pioneering
work in radiation, natural convection heat transfer,combustion heat transfer, and heat transfer in manufacturing systems, to name a few areas. During the mid1970s, Professor Greif and his students produced anumber of signi®cant manuscripts on the detailed band
absorption properties of gases. These seminal papers

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Professor Ralph Greif on his 65th birthday

continue to be referenced today. In the 1980s Professor
Greif and his students de®ned and led research on heattransfer in ¯ame quenching processes. Over the past tenyears, he and his group have produced an impressive
body of work on heat and mass transfer in chemical
vapor deposition systems. The results from his researchin these dierent technical areas have been published inover 160 journal articles. His research accomplishments
have been recognized by a number of awards, including
a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1969±70 and the ASME
Heat Transfer Memorial Award in 1985. While Professor Greif's name has been synonymous with Berkeley
heat transfer over the years, he has in fact left on occasion to serve as a visiting scholar around the world. In1969, he was a visiting scholar at Imperial College ofScience and Technology in London. In 1977 he was avisiting professor at Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa.
In addition to the legacy of students whose lives hehas touched, Professor Greif has also served the heattransfer community admirably throughout his career. As
many of you know, he has continuously contributed
within the ASME Heat Transfer Division for more than
30 years. He began his service to ASME in the TechnicalCommittee on Aerospace Heat Transfer. He served as
Chairman of that committee between 1970 and 1973. He
was a member of the Computer Technology Policy
Committee between 1975 and 1979. He served on theHonors and Awards Committee from 1979 to 1982, andwas Chairman in 1981. Professor Greif was a member ofthe ASME/AIChE, Max Jakob Board of Awards between 1982 and 1985 and was Vice-Chairman of thatcommittee in 1984. From 1990 to 1995, he was a member of the Heat Transfer Division Executive Committee,
serving as its Chairman between 1993 and 1994.
One of Ralph Greif's professional passions has been
the communication of technical knowledge. He has

contributed his time and energy by serving on the editorial boards of a number of heat transfer journals, including serving on the Honorary Editorial Advisory
Board of IJHMT since 1995. From 1983 to 1989 he wasan Associate Technical Editor of the Journal of HeatTransfer.
Ralph and Judy make time in their busy schedules tovisit their three children and three grandchildren. Anyone who knows him can sense the immense pride he has
in all of them. He enjoys hiking, walking, investing, andreading ®ction. He looks forward to his annual backpacking trip to the Sierra Nevada mountains, a passion
he developed shortly after arriving at Berkeley as a ÔÔkidfrom the Bronx''.
This tribute to Ralph Greif has been motivated not
only by his exemplary contributions and service to ourheat transfer community, but also by the quality of hischaracter. Those who know Ralph Greif know that heshines as an example of decency, kindness, and humility.
We, friends of Ralph Greif, enthusiastically wish Ralpha very happy birthday as we also thank him for hisfriendship and contribution to our shared organizations
over the years.
H.R. BaumO.A. Ezekoye
C.P. GrigoropoulosJ.P. Hartnett
J.A.C. Humphrey
A.G. Lavine
N. LiorR.L. Mahajan
W.J. Minkowycz
P.J. Pagni
R.F. Sawyer
R.N. Smith
K.-T. Yang