Memorial Tributes to Professor Ivan Catton

The following is a tribute by Dr. Vijay K. Dhir.

The following is a tribute from Dr. Portonovo S. Ayyaswamy.

Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer

Upon the successful completion of my Ph.D. Preliminary
exams at UCLA’s Dept. of Energy and Kinetics, now the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Dept. Head Prof.
Donald Edwards asked me in which field I would write my Ph.D.
dissertation. When I told him natural convection and buoyancydriven flows, Prof. Edwards suggested that I talk with Prof. Ivan
Catton. His suggestion was amongst the very best advice I haveever received, and this was a pivotal moment in my career.
I made an appointment to talk with Prof. Catton, who agreed toadvise me, and we soon embarked on an excellent three years of
my doctoral research. Prof. Catton was a superb advisor, providing me with deeply insightful suggestions. He was also exceedingly kind and generous with his time with all of his students.
Prof. Catton had a unique ability for conceptually describing complicated thermal fluidic phenomena in simple terms. This rare
characteristic enabled me to develop a comprehensive analytical/numerical program of systematic study of natural convection inenclosures oriented at an arbitrary angle to the gravitational vector. The results, when they were eventually published, have stood
the test of time and are referenced in almost all textbooks andmonographs related to heat transfer when those texts deal withnatural convection in enclosures.
Subsequent to receiving my Ph.D. Degree, I worked for sometime under the joint direction of Profs. Ivan Catton and Donald K.
Edwards as a postdoctoral scholar. In our research, we developed
a fundamental equation for the friction factor governing capillarydriven flows occurring in grooved geometries. This equation is
also referenced in almost all archival publications, monographs,
and textbooks when they discuss capillary flows in grooved geometries. Such remarkable accomplishments were made possible
due to Prof. Catton’s excellent guidance.
A further benefit of working under the guidance of Prof. Catton
was that he would discuss some of his consulting projects for
major aerospace companies with me. These discussions enriched
my understanding of the field in a very direct manner. Furthermore, he would be very generous by paying me a portion of theconsulting fee he had received.
Professor Catton was remarkably capable in working withdiverse problems in heat and mass transfer, which span an enormous variety of subfields. The legacy of this capability includes
his huge contributions to archival literature and his consultancy
to various advanced engineering companies and nationalagencies.
To celebrate this legacy, I organized a seminar on his 65th birthday, wherein his vast cohort of doctoral students who had gone onto achieve excellence in their own fields and fellow faculty delivered invited lectures. Taking place at the UCLA campus, thisgrand celebration was attended by scholars from around the country who had flown in for this special occasion as well as a huge
number of faculty at UCLA and neighboring universities. The
event was a testimony to his excellence in the field.
After I retired as the Asa Whitney Distinguished Professor of
Dynamical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, I
returned to UCLA, where I now serve as a Distinguished
Adjunct Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Here again, I had the unique opportunity towork with Prof. Catton on a research project involving highpressure, high-temperature compact heat exchangers especiallyfor space-based applications. This work has resulted in some
important archival papers. Sadly, toward the end of this project,
Prof. Catton fell ill and passed on. While I am greatly saddenedby his passing, I consider myself to be wonderfully lucky that I
was able to be his coauthor on the final archival papers that hepublished.
Indeed, Prof. Catton is greatly missed by us all.

C 2023 by ASME
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MARCH 2023, Vol. 145 / 030101-1

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Professor Ivan Catton was born in British Columbia, Canada.
At a young age, he migrated with his family to the Los Angeles
area. He was a Bruin through-and-through: twice an alumnus of
the UCLA School of Engineering and Applied Science, where hecompleted his undergraduate and graduate degrees. During that
period, the UCLA School of Engineering offered a unified engineering curriculum under the leadership of the late Dean L.M.K.
Boelter. As an undergraduate student, Ivan Catton was a memberof UCLA’s wrestling team. His Ph.D. advisor was the late Prof.
Donald K. Edwards. Upon the completion of his doctoral degree,
Prof. Catton worked for some time at the aircraft manufacturing
company McDonnell Douglas before joining UCLA as an assistant professor in 1967. He continued his service to UCLA, and several years prior to his retirement in 2015, he was named Distinguished Professor of Engineering and Applied Science.
Professor Catton had broad-based training as a student, whichis reflected in his research work as a faculty member. He wasequally comfortable doing research in Environmental Science andEngineering, Thermal Science and Engineering, and Nuclear
Reactor Thermal Hydraulics and Safety. The breadth and depth of
his scholarly work are amongst the top few in the technical community worldwide. Over his career, he was prolific in publishinghis scholarly work in archival journals and in proceedings of conferences. He graduated a large number of M.S. and Ph.D. students,
several of whom are now leaders in the field in their own right.
His commitment to research and mentoring of students was so
deep that even after his retirement, he continued to be involved inresearch, advising graduate students, and serving on Ph.D. student
dissertation committees. Students miss him and definitely feel thevoid left behind by him. For his scholarly contributions to thetechnical literature, he received a number of recognitions. He was
the recipient of the Heat Transfer Memorial Award of the Heat
Transfer Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Max Jakob Award of ASME and American
Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). The latter is the highest
award in the field of heat and mass transfer, both nationally andinternationally. He was a Fellow of both ASME and American
Nuclear Society (ANS).
Professor Catton was not only a mentor to me; he was also likean older brother when I started at UCLA. He gave me guidance as
to what was expected from a successful faculty member in termsof research and mentoring of graduate students. He got me
involved in research projects that he was working on in the areasof nuclear reactor thermal hydraulics and safety. In fact, he evengave me space in the Nuclear Energy Laboratory (NEL), where hewas the director, to start my experimental research. Additionally,
he kindly allowed me to use the services of the NEL technicalsupport staff. Over the years, our friendship grew, and we collaborated as colleagues on a number of extramurally funded projects.
During project discussions, Prof. Catton very quickly got to theheart of problems and came up with innovative ideas and directions
for research. We did have our disagreements, but the greatest quality Prof. Catton had was that soon he would forget what we werearguing about and suggest we go for lunch or coffee. Often, wefound ourselves in the student coffee shop sneaking apple pies!
Professor Catton was very much engaged in providing service
to the profession. Prominent amongst his professional activities is
his service on the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards(ACRS) of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The advice
he offered as a member of ACRS contributed to the enhanced
safety of the current operating nuclear reactors in the United States.
Professor Catton passed on June 12, 2021, surrounded by hisfamily and students who had become part of his family. He is survived by his wife Susan, and sons Mark, Michael, and Craig aswell as a number of grandchildren.

Vijay K. Dhir
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering,
University of California,
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Portonovo S. Ayyaswamy
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering,
University of California,
Los Angeles, CA 90095

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030101-2 / Vol. 145, MARCH 2023

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