In Memoriam: Professor Claus A. Busse development of gas-controlled co-axial heat pipes withextremely high isothermality and temperature stability as
blackbodies for thermometry applications.

 study of laminar flow in cylindrical tubes with mass injection and suction, and in connection with that: determinationof the subsonic pressure recovery in cylindrical heat pipes
and determination of the sonic and viscous limits in heat
pipes,
 determination of the wet point in heat pipe capillary structures, investigation of the axial dry-out limit of gravity-assisted heat
pipes with capillary flow,
 development of a microzone evaporation model for axiallygrooved heat pipes and determination of the evaporator heattransfer coefficient,Yury Maidanik
Past Chairman
Institute of Thermal Physics,
Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences,
Ekaterinburg 620016, Russia

Journal of Heat Transfer

Since the 1970 years, in parallel to his research work at the Joint
Research Center, Claus Busse closely collaborated with IKE(Institute of Nuclear Technology and Energy Systems) at theUniversity of Stuttgart, Germany. There he gave lectures on heatpipe theory. In 1981, he was appointed as an ExtraordinaryProfessor. He supervised seven Ph.D. candidates, four of them incollaboration with IKE.
During the last period of his employment with the Joint
Research Center (1988–1993), Professor Busse took responsibility
for the Process Engineering Unit (Division) and was Deputy
Director of the Institute for Safety Engineering. A field that
attracted his particular scientific interest was thermal runaway
reactions which are highly important safety problems in chemicaland metallurgical industries.
Professor Busse was a founding member of the International
Heat Pipe Conference (IHPC) Committee in 1972. The first IHPC
took place in Stuttgart in 1973. In 1976, he organized the second
IHPC in Bologna, Italy. In 2010, at the 15th IHPC in Clemson,
SC, Professor Busse was honored with the George Grover Medalfor his outstanding contributions to the development of heat pipescience and technology.
Professor Busse died on June 10, 2018. He is survived by hiswife Liesel, their four daughters, and nine grandchildren.
On behalf of the Committee on Joint International Heat Pipe
Conferences and Symposia,
Jocelyn Bonjour
Chairman
CETHIL-INSA de Lyon,
Villeurbanne Cedex 69621, France

Manfred Groll
Honorary Chairman
Institute of Nuclear Technology and Energy Systems (IKE),
University of Stuttgart,
Stuttgart 70569, Germany

C 2019 by ASME
Copyright V

OCTOBER 2019, Vol. 141 / 101001-1

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Professor Claus A. Busse, who passed away at the age of 90,
was a pioneer in heat pipe science and technology. He belonged
to the first generation of scientists, who devoted most of theirscientific activities to heat pipes and made major contributions totheir fundamental understanding, design, and development.
Professor Busse was born on June 08, 1928 in Sondershausen,
Germany. After finishing high school in 1946, he worked as aradio technician in Bremen. From 1949, he studied Physics at theUniversity of G€ottingen, graduating with a Ph.D. in Theoretical
Physics in 1954.
After graduation he was first employed in industry, working
in the area of electronic devices and later in nuclear reactor
technology. In 1959, he was appointed as a German delegate toEURATOM in Brussels, Belgium, the newly founded European
organization for the joint development of nuclear reactor industry.
In 1961, he moved to the Joint Research Center of the Commission of the European Communities (now: European Commission)in Ispra, Italy. There he started his research work on heat pipes in1965. He established one of the first heat pipe research groups
in Europe which soon obtained a leading position. His early work
was related to high temperature liquid metal heat pipes (sodium,lithium, and silver) in the frame of thermionic energy conversion
for space applications. A major focus was corrosion in liquid
metal heat pipes. He investigated particularly the corrosion
phenomena and mechanisms of lithium heat pipes which became
the topic of his Habilitation thesis, defended at the University of
Stuttgart, Germany, in 1970. Apart of this research, Professor
Busse made great contributions to both the development of heatpipe theory and sophisticated experimental heat pipe investigation. Moreover, he developed heat pipe blackbodies for highprecision thermometry. His major achievements can be summarized as: