International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 70 (2014) 1064–1065

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhmt

EditorialProf. Wen-Quan Tao, Chinese Academician, on his 75th birthday

Professor Wen-Quan Tao, a Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Professor of Xi’an Jiaotong University (XJTU), Xi’an, China, celebrates his 75th birthday this year. It is a great pleasure for
us on this occasion to express our sincere congratulations on his
outstanding contributions and pioneer achievements in the ﬁeldof numerical heat transfer and heat transfer enhancement.
Professor Tao was born in Zhejiang Province, China on 3 March
1939. He graduated from XJTU in 1962. From 1963 he became agraduate student of Professor Shi-Ming Yang. Since 1966 onwards,
he worked as a lecturer of heat transfer at XJTU. From 1980–1982,
he was a visiting scholar supervised by Professor E.M. Sparrow at
the University of Minnesota in USA. In 1986, he became a full Professor at XJTU. Afterwards, he was appointed as Guest Professors ofHong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2010, Universite Paris-Est Marne la Vallee in 2009 and 2007, Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2003, Kyushu University of Japan in 1997.
He has been serving as President of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University since its foundation in 2006.
Professor Tao has been active in national and international scientiﬁc organizations. At present, he serves as associate editors ofInternational Journal of Heat & Mass Transfer, International
0017-9310/$ - see front matter Ó 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2013.11.064

Communications in Heat & Mass transfer and ASME Journal of HeatTransfer. He is also a member of Advisory Board of Numerical Heat
Transfer and Editorial Board of Progress in Computational Fluid
Dynamics, and a Member of Scientiﬁc Council of International Centre for Heat and Mass Transfer (ICHMT). As one of the initiators, heorganized the ﬁrst Asian Symposium on Computational Heat
Transfer and Fluid Flow at XJTU in 2007, and now it becomes oneof the international important events held in this ascendant ﬁeld
every two years.
Professor Tao has always focused his research work on fundamentals and applications of ﬁnite volume method. In early years,
he made remarkable contributions on the discretization of convective term, and velocity–pressure coupling algorithm, etc. Recently,
Professor Tao has focused his studies on the microscale and nanoscale ﬂuid ﬂow and heat transfer, and multiscale numerical simulation of ﬂow and heat transfer in microelectronics, fuel cells,
pollutant dispersions, and extreme thermal insulations.
Professor Tao also made great contributions in heat transfer
enhancement theory, mechanisms and engineering applications.
He extended the ﬁeld synergy principle from parabolic ﬂow toelliptical ﬂow, and showed that it can unify existing heat

Editorial / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 70 (2014) 1064–1065

transfer enhancement mechanisms of single phase ﬂow (increasing ﬂow disturbance, decreasing thermal boundary layer thickness, etc.). He also proposed a comprehensive performance
evaluation plot for heat transfer enhancing techniques which
conforms three evaluation constraints (identical pumping power,identical pressure drop and identical ﬂow rate) to a uniform
manner.
Professor Tao has been an inﬂuential educator of Engineering
Thermophysics in China. He has supervised over 50 doctoral students and has been teaching many undergraduate students. Hewrote more than 10 textbooks (in Chinese) related to heat transfer and numerical heat transfer for undergraduates and postgraduates. His Numerical Heat Transfer book (in Chinese), ﬁrst
published in 1987, is welcomed as a favorite graduate textbook
in China.
On behalf of Professor Tao’s former students, colleagues andfriends, we wish him all the best for the future.

1065⇑W.J. Minkowycz
University of Illinois at Chicago,
Department of Mechanical Engineering (M/C 251),
842 West Taylor Street,
Room 2049 ERF,
Chicago 60607-7022,
United States
Z.Y. Guo
P. Cheng
T. SimonA. Mohamad
N. Hur
C.F. MaX. Zhang
Y.L. He
Q.W. Wang⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: wjm@uic.edu (W.J. Minkowycz)
Available online 3 January 2014