International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 46 (2003) 2515–2517
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In memoriam

Professor Chang-Lin Tien (1935–2002)

On October 29, 2002, Professor Chang-Lin Tien diedat the age of 67, after suﬀering from a debilitating disease that lasted more than two years. With this, faded
the light that shone so brightly for more than 40 years
on the heat transfer community and on the society atlarge. Reﬂecting upon his life, career, accomplishments,
and contributions, one is left to wonder the enormity ofthis loss and the magnitude of his legacy.
Professor Tien was born July 24, 1935, in Wuhan,China. With a bachelors in mechanical engineering from
National Taiwan University, he arrived in the UnitedStates in 1956 to study at the University of Louisville.
He earned his masters degree there in 1957 and then asecond masters degree and his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering just two years later at Princeton University in
1959. Later in 1959, at 24, he became the youngest assistant professor ever hired in mechanical engineering at
UC Berkeley, where he would subsequently serve as afaculty member for 42 years. He became full professor in1968, later chaired the Department of Mechanical Engineering between 1974 and 1981, and, for two years,1983–1985, was UC BerkeleyÕs vice chancellor for research. In 1988, he left the Berkeley campus to be UC
IrvineÕs executive vice chancellor. He returned to UC
doi:10.1016/S0017-9310(03)00095-4

Berkeley in 1990 as chancellor and as the ﬁrst Asian
American to head a major research university in theUnited States.
Since his graduate days at Louisville and Princeton
and through his academic life at Berkeley, Professor
Tien dedicated his research career to thermal science andengineering. By the time he retired in 2001, he had madecontributions to almost all aspects of this ﬁeld and wasresponsible for starting many of them. The hallmark of
his research was to explore, understand, and exploit theextremes––ultra-large and ultra-small length and timescales, ultra-high and ultra-low heat ﬂow rates andtemperature, etc.
Starting in the 1960s, after working brieﬂy on hydrodynamics and heat transfer of boundary layer ﬂows,
he focused his eﬀorts on radiation heat transfer. His
initial emphasis was on radiative properties of gases,
which led to the landmark paper in Advances in Heat
Transfer on this topic. He brought a new engineering
approach based on the fundamental science of radiation–matter interactions, which involves understanding
complex quantum and statistical mechanical interactionsof photons with molecules, and then developing design
rules that capture the essential physics while being2516

In memorium / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 46 (2003) 2515–2517

tractable for engineering design. His approach had
major inﬂuence on various technologies, most notably,aerospace and energy.
Spanning the 1960s and 1970s, he also investigatedradiative heat transfer in cryogenic systems as wellas interaction of radiation with particulates, ﬁbers andvarious other micro/nanostructured solids. His work
became the cornerstone of designing materials for space
shuttle thermal protection, packed bed reactors, radiative heat pipes for space thermal management, ultrahigh thermal insulation, as well as high-eﬃciency andenvironmentally-benign combustion systems.
Later in the 1980s and 1990s, he expanded his research to radiation–surface interactions especially in
combustion system, and ventured into the new topic offemtosecond and nanometer-scale radiation–matter interactions. It is worth noting that in the 1960s, Professor
Tien received much recognition for his work on nearﬁeld radiation heat transfer, which was used to improvecryogenic insulation. This work has now become aclassic in the new and emerging ﬁeld of micro/nanoscaleheat transfer.
While many would have been satisﬁed with this rangeof contributions, Professor TienÕs research repertoire
included much more. Starting in the 1970s, much of his
research eﬀort concentrated on multiphase and multicomponent ﬂows and heat transfer. Responding to theenergy crisis in the 1970s, his work led to major contributions in heat and mass transfer in porous media,
condensation, two-phase ﬂows, granular ﬂows, etc. Inparticular, he investigated the fundamental mechanismsof mixing, dispersion, and ﬂow channeling near a wallin complex media, which led to breakthroughs in ourunderstanding. His work had signiﬁcant impact on
the design and operation of thermal insulation, drying
technology, catalytic and packed bed reactors, geothermal systems, heat pipes, and nuclear reactors. In particular, his work on ﬂow channeling at the interface of aporous and solid wall received the classic paper award
after 20 years, due to its inﬂuence on the ﬁeld and its
positive impact on the petroleum industries as well as in
microelectronics thermal management.
The 1980s and 1990s saw the emergence of the digitalcomputers and information science as a major technological revolution. An underlying theme of this revolution is miniaturization and integration, which presents
new opportunities and challenges in thermal science andengineering. Recognizing this as a critical transition inheat transfer research and following his quest for theextremes, Professor Tien single-handedly galvanized theheat transfer community, especially the young, and pioneered the ﬁeld of micro/nanoscale thermal science andengineering. Following his instincts of discovering new
physics at ultra-small length and time scales, his research
led to investigations of phonon, photon, and electron
dynamics in solid and liquid nanostructures and at

femtosecond timescales. He left his mark on this ﬁeldagain, by combining fundamental science with engineering design. While his research on micro/nanoscaleheat transfer can be traced back to the 1960s, he realized
earlier than most in the 1980s that there was the possibility of a whole new technology based on nanoscalescience and engineering, which would form the infrastructure and the foundation for future progress in information technology and biotechnology. This has
become the most exciting area of research not only
within the heat transfer community but also with mechanical engineering in general.
Over the span of four decades, Professor Tien has
published one book, 15 edited volumes and more than
300 research journal and monograph articles. He was
the most eminent scholar and leader in thermal scienceand engineering, and in mechanical engineering in general. Impacts of his research and scholarship can bejudged by the many prestigious awards that he received:Max Jacob Memorial Award, 1981; National Academyof Engineering, 1976; Heat Transfer Memorial Award,1974; NSF Distinguished Lecturer in Engineering, 1997;
Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1994; Honorary Member
ASME, 1993; ASME Heat Transfer Classic PaperAward, 1999; and National Academy of EngineeringÕsFounders Award. However, an award that was specialto him was the BerkeleyÕs Distinguished Teaching
Award, which he received in 1962 at age 26, making himto youngest professor in the history of Berkeley to receive this honor. This came from a deep commitment toteaching and education, not only in classrooms but in
his research group as well. He mentored over 60 doctoral students, and today many of his former graduate
students are now professors themselves, and are mentoring yet another generation of graduate students withkey lessons he taught. These lessons are now fondly
known as ‘‘Tienisms’’: ÔAny new ideas?Õ ÔGo to the extremesÕ; ÔIdeas should be crazy enough to be rejected byyour peersÕ; ÔSometimes the simple solutions have thegreatest impactÕ; ÔDig deepÕ and ÔDream about your researchÕ. What is intriguing, however, are the things henever told his students to follow, but set an example
through his own actions––complete and utmost dedication to serve others and respect for all people. To hisstudents, he was someone who set the benchmark for
integrity, excellence, scholarship, creativity, and hardwork. He was keen on building a community aroundhimself and others. His contributions as a member of theeditorial board of the International Journal of Heat andMass Transfer, his founding editorship of the newjournal of Microscale Thermophysical Engineering, andhis numerous occasions of help and support to international researchers across various political boundaries
were a reﬂection of his untold purpose in life.
Although the heat transfer community was privileged
to witness the brilliance of Professor TienÕs researchIn memorium / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 46 (2003) 2515–2517

career, his life had many additional dimensions thatare equally noteworthy. As Chancellor of UC Berkeley,
Professor Tien was also an unoﬃcial diplomat inAsia, meeting with heads of state and other leaders topromote the American values of democracy and freedom. He helped found the Committee of 100, a nonpartisan group of Chinese Americans that works tofoster dialogue and understanding between Asia and theUnited States. He was an active member of the Paciﬁc
Council on International Policy, the Council on Foreign
Relations, and many others. Indicative of the scope of
his leadership in both domestic and international arenas
were his appointments as Chairman of the Asia Foundation, Chairman of the San Francisco Bay Area Economic Forum, and Chairman of the Chief ExecutiveÕsCommission on Innovation and Technology in HongKong. In 1999, Professor Tien was appointed as amember of the US National Science Board and the US
National Commission on Mathematics and Science
Teaching for the 21st Century. He has also served asco-chair of the National Commission on Asia in theSchools.
In addition to successfully reversing the eﬀects ofmajor state budget cuts in the early 1990s, Chancellor
Tien developed approaches to counter the impacts of the1995 UC RegentsÕ ban on aﬃrmative action. He launched the Berkeley Pledge, a nationally recognized partnership between UC Berkeley and CaliforniaÕs K-12
public schools that today is called School/UniversityPartnerships.
Professor Tien was a scientiﬁc consultant to manyorganizations, research laboratories, and private companies. He served on the boards of Chevron, Kaiser
Permanente, Wells Fargo Bank, the San FranciscoSymphony, and Princeton University. University Pro-2517

fessor Emeritus for the 10-campus system, he was also
the A. Martin Berlin Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and UC BerkeleyÕs ﬁrst NEC Distinguished
Professor of Engineering. Along with the long list ofawards recognizing his scholarship, he received the ﬁrstever UC Presidential Medal and the Berkeley Citation,
the two most prestigious awards for a member of theUC and Berkeley faculty.
Professor Tien will be missed by many in this world.
To his former students, he was a father ﬁgure who
provided an education not only in research but in life aswell. To the Mechanical Engineering Department andthe College of Engineering at UC Berkeley, he was apillar of wisdom, sound judgment, warmth, and humility. We will miss his contagious laughter and joyous
enthusiasm in the corridors of Etcheverry Hall. To thefellow editors of the International Journal of Heat andMass Transfer and to the research community in general, he will be missed as a friend, colleague, intellectual
leader and visionary not only for our own ﬁeld, but also
for science, engineering, and education in the world. To
the Berkeley campus and the UC system, he was an
exceptional leader, one who never compromised hisprinciples and had the strength to support the students and faculty with compassion, energy, and optimism in the face many diﬃculties. To the Asian
American community, he will be missed as an ambassador of scholarship, goodwill and cultural harmony.
May his soul rest in peace, and his spirit live on among
all of us.
A. Majumdar
P.F. Peterson
J.P. Hartnett
W.J. Minkowycz