International Journal of Multiphase Flow 73 (2015) iii–iv

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International Journal of Multiphase Flowj o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / i j m u l fl o w

Obituary: Gad Hetsroni, Founding Editor IJMF

Gad Hetsroni created this journal in 1973, some 42 years ago.
He was the Editor-in-Chief until 2008, for 35 years. His own life
was closely intertwined with that of the Journal. He loved the journal, was a protective and jealous ‘‘owner.’’ In return, Gad and hisjournal had a very signiﬁcant impact on the ﬁeld by identifying
and bringing together the multiphase ﬂow community aroundthe IJMF. During his time, many prominent members of the multiphase ﬂow community acted as Associate Editors and members of
the Editorial Board. Gad made his Associate Editors work hard andwas meticulous, fair but also an unforgiving editor; the quality ofthe papers and the reputation that the Journal enjoys today testifyto this.
Gad liked to recall the birth of the IJMF, his early discussions
with the Pergamon publisher, the late Bob Maxwell. During thepreparations, he learned that Professor Hugh Simpson had initiateda new journal, with Elsevier, to be called the International Journal ofMulti-Phase Flow. He realized that the two-phase ﬂow ﬁeld could
not sustain two good journals (the only exception to his beloved
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmultiphaseﬂow.2015.05.001

and often-repeated rule ‘‘two is better than one’’). One journal title
had a hyphen and the other not, so he went to see Hugh and theyagreed to join their efforts and also remove the hyphen. HughSimpson became IJMF Editor for many years, and Elsevier andPergamon were joint publishers – the only such joint venture.
When one of us (GY), back in 1999, asked several prominent
members of the multiphase ﬂow community to contribute to a
special IJMF edition, a Festschrift honoring the Editor-in-Chief at
his 65th birthday, we realized once more the admiration, respect
and affection that the multiphase community had for Gad. The
response and the result were overwhelming: 22 articles and somany words of admiration, respect and affection from the members of this large family. Graham B. Wallis wrote a long poem forGad; the beginning reads: ‘‘. . . let me here the praises sing/ of theeditorial king/ of the international/ utterly exceptional/ Journal of
the Multiphase,/ that the toughest critics praise.’’Gad Hetsroni was born in Haifa in 1934, before the creation of
the state of Israel. In 1957, he graduated with a B.Sc. cum laude
from the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, whose ﬁrst
cornerstone was laid in 1912. He continued his education in theUS and obtained his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1963.
He then occupied for a couple of years a position with theAtomic Power Division of Westinghouse before going back toIsrael in 1965 and joining the Faculty of the Technion where heremained and ﬁnished his days, still working as an emeritus in
his Multiphase Flow Lab.
In 1974 he became the Danciger Professor of Engineering at
Technion. In the meantime, he also held positions in the US, atthe Electric Power Research Institute, Stanford University, theUniversity of Minnesota, and the University of New South Walesin Australia. At the Technion, he served as Dean of MechanicalEngineering and as Head of the Neaman Institute for AdvancedStudies. Among his many national committee assignments, hewas also Head of the National Council for Research andDevelopment in Israel. He was a Fellow of ASME International,
where he served as Vice President of Region XIII, and as Governor.
Gad has served the national and international scientiﬁc community in many ways (scientiﬁc committee member, member ofboard of directors, conference organizer, editor, etc.) and he wasalso honored several times, most prominently with the ICMF
Senior Award.
In research, Gad Hetsroni was often the ﬁrst and the best. Just tomention a few examples, he conducted pioneering work on theinteraction between turbulence and particles; indeed, understanding the behavior of particles in gaseous or liquid streams is of great
importance in several industrial or environmental applications. He
also developed the technique of using infrared radiometry to

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Obituary / International Journal of Multiphase Flow 73 (2015) iii–iv

measure the temperature distribution on the wall of a conduit; ingroundbreaking experiments, this technique was applied tomeasure the interaction of particles with the wall in
dispersed-particle ﬂows. With the help of the associated numericalsignal processing, the technique renders possible the study of thecoherent structures, which are intimately related to turbulence.
Recently, he has used surfactants to produce a decay of the turbulence, and hence learn about its sources from a different angle. The
last several years, he has worked on a ‘‘hot’’ topic, namely heattransfer and ﬂuid ﬂow in microchannels, of great relevance in‘‘high-tech’’ industries. This work has resulted in the publicationof the book, Fluid Flow, Heat Transfer and Boiling in Micro-channels;
he is the senior author. This brings the number of major books that
he published on multiphase ﬂows to three, not including major
chapters that he wrote in other books. He is the author of about
250 research papers.
Professor Hetsroni has been passing on the basic knowledge on
ﬂuid dynamics and multiphase ﬂows to many generations ofresearchers and scientists/engineers. Another great love and very
successful focal point of his career were the Short Courses on
Multiphase Flows that he directed or co-directed for many years:
he started the now famous series when he was at Stanford. Theﬁrst course was offered in 1979 and then continued atETH-Zurich and UC-Santa Barbara. Over 2000 participants fromall over the world have enrolled in these courses conducted with
two of the undersigned (GY and GFH) and Sanjoy Banerjee. The
participants in these courses have ‘‘propagated the message’’ andthey can be encountered today as important researchers or managers of their laboratories. Professor Hetsroni, at the various academic institutions with which he was associated during his longand fruitful academic career, has directed some 35 doctoral andmasters’ students and has never stopped researching and having
fun with multiphase ﬂows.
Gad was not only a very prominent scientist and teacher; hewas also a charming citizen of the world. His mischievous smileand his great humor enlightened encounters, dinners, meetings . . .

Those of us who had the chance to intimately know Gad also
greatly appreciated his human qualities, caring for friends, love
for music, good food and other good things in life, curiosity for anything new. The expression ‘‘he was a truly good Mensch’’ seemed
to be coined for him.
Gad passed peacefully away in March 2015. He is survived byhis lifelong wife and companion Ruth (born Gurevitz) and two of
their three beautiful daughters, Anat, Orli (1965–1986) and Yael.
His family agreed to add a farewell to Gad in the few lines below.
We share with them a great sense of loss.
G. Yadigaroglu, G.F. Hewitt
Dear Husband, Dad and Grandfather
When we read all this, we are so proud. Proud of you and proudof being the close family of this extraordinary man describedabove. You had a few families: us, the Technion and The Journal.
You truly loved and contributed to all ‘‘families.’’
As successful as you were in the scientiﬁc ﬁeld, you were also atbeing a family man. For us, you were the man who knew everything, curious to ﬁnd out more, and never tired of educating us.
Always there for us, protecting, loving and showing us the way
to excel in any direction we chose. We will try to follow yourlegacy – ‘‘just do it’’ – as you always told us and did yourself.
We know how proud you were of every new issue of the Journalthat came out, always trying to explain some of it to us, so weknew and appreciated the progress in your research.
All your hard work that you did with such passion will live longafter you, will teach many generations to come. We all know howteaching was so important to you.
And we, your loving family, will keep you as an example of afamily man, husband, father and grandfather, the best anyone
could wish for. We were not ready to let you go and we missyou so much already.
We love you
Ruthie, Anat, Yael