International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 49 (2006) 1557–1558
www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhmt

Editorial

Professor Dr.-Ing. Wilfried Roetzel on his 70th birthday

It is a great privilege and distinct pleasure to write thisbirthday laudatio to celebrate Professor Roetzel’s live
and his contributions to heat transfer research over morethan 40 years. We will attempt to give the readers a glimpseof his distinguished career as a scientist and an educator.
Professor Roetzel received his Diplom-Ingenieur degree
in mechanical engineering at the Technical University
Hannover in 1962 and his Ph.D. in chemical engineeringwith the thesis ‘‘Der Einﬂuß von Schaumbildung auf die
Rektiﬁzierwirkung von Siebböden’’ from the Institute ofThermodynamics and Process Engineering at the same
university in 1968. His Ph.D. advisor was Professor Hausen. Professor Roetzel joined the Institute of Thermodynamics at the Technical University Berlin in 1968. After 3
years he obtained the postdoctoral lecture qualiﬁcation(Habilitation) for heat and mass transfer, working under
the supervision of Professor K. Stephan. Professor Roetzel
left the Technical University Berlin in order to gain avaried experience in industry. He spent 3 years as a Chief
Research Oﬃcer and a Senior Chief Research Oﬃcer at
the Chemical Engineering Research Group of the South
African Council for Scientiﬁc and Industrial Research inPretoria. He then joined Bayer AG in Krefeld-Uerdingen(Germany) as Engineer and Senior Manager.
After these industrial years Professor Roetzel moved to
the Institute of Thermodynamics at the University of theFederal Armed Forces Hamburg. From 1983 to 2001 he0017-9310/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2006.02.005

headed this institute. Although retired oﬃcially in 2001,
one usually still ﬁnds him working on science and related
activities.
Professor Roetzel is best known for his work on heatexchangers. Author of the chapter on heat exchanger designin the well-known VDI Heat Atlas, the results of his research are used by professional engineers in Germany andthroughout the world. In the past decade, his attention
turned to a rather novel approach, the application of dispersion models to thermal design of heat exchangers. WithProfessor Xuan he authored the book, Dynamic Behaviourof Heat Exchangers, which summarizes main results of thiswork. Later he also developed together with Professor Luo
the theory for multistream heat exchangers and heat exchanger networks. But his research interests were by far
not limited to heat exchangers. Besides successful work onenhanced heat transfer surfaces, condensation heat transfer,solubility and diﬀusion coeﬃcients of gases in liquids at
higher pressure, measurement techniques for thermal conductivity and diﬀusivity of solids, liquids and gases andhis more recent series of papers on the analysis of the dynamic behaviour of two- and multistream heat exchangers
and their networks, Professor Roetzel also dealt with theanalytical calculation of bullet trajectories in the ﬁeld of ballistics and published several papers on this topic.
Professor Roetzel is member of numerous German scientiﬁc or engineering associations, such as the Technical1558

Editorial / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 49 (2006) 1557–1558

Committee for Heat and Mass Transfer of the VDI Society
for Chemical and Process Engineering (VDI GVC-Fachausschuss Wärme- und Stoﬀübertragung). He is a Fellowof the South African Institution of Chemical Engineers andmember of the Joachim Jungius-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften e.V. in Hamburg. In 2005 Professor Roetzel became
senior member of the newly founded Akademie der Wissenschaften in Hamburg. In recognition of his national
and international scientiﬁc reputation, Professor Roetzel
has been admitted as an Advisory Professor of the Nanjing
University of Science and Technology (China), a Guest Professor of the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, and a Fellow of the Wessex Institute of Great Britain.
During his tenure as a faculty member, Professor Roetzel supervised 19 Ph.D. students and more than 150 student
theses. He is author of one book, several chapters of theVDI Heat Atlas and about 240 papers in journals, conference proceedings or as monographs. Further, he is memberof the Editorial Board of the book series Advances in Heat
Transfer of WIT Press, member of the Baltic Heat Transfer
Committee, member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Heat Exchangers and member of theHonorary Editorial Advisory Boards of the International
Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer and the International
Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer.
As many in the academic community will readily admit,
Professor Roetzel’s approach to research in general, and toheat transfer topics in particular, is quite unique. In thevast majority of Professor Roetzel’s publications, one willﬁnd this unique trademark of strong emphasis on theoretical elegance. From his early work on condensation to thermal design of complex heat exchangers and his more recent
series of papers on the analysis of the dynamic behaviourof heat exchangers, Professor Roetzel’s focus was the deep
theoretical analysis of the heat transfer topics. Throughout
his professional career he has taken on many challenges
and attacked them with vigor. Never resting on his laurels,
he applies his insatiable curiosity, relentless drive and infectious enthusiasm to everything he does.
We would like to thank Professor Roetzel for his friendship, encouragement, advice, constructive criticism andcollegial support during his wonderful career and we wish
him a happy 70th birthday.
G. Fieg
E. Hahne
X. LuoB. Spang
K. Spindler
Y. XuanInstitut fur Thermodynamik und Warmetechnik,
Universitat Stuttgart,
Pfaﬀenwaldring 6,
D-70550 Stuttgart,
Germany
Tel.: +49 711 685 3536; fax: +49 711 685 3503
E-mail address: hahne@itw.uni-stuttgart.de