Behind the Bricks: Neal Amundson

Smith. Kolthoff. Tate. Amundson. Shepherd. Lind. Although hundreds of IT students pour through buildings bearing these names on a daily basis, few of us know anything about the people for whom they are named. This new series, "Behind the Bricks," provides biographical insight into the influential scientists and engineers who helped shape the Institute of Technology and whose legacies live on within the walls of our buildings.

by Eric Tsai

On May 17, 1979, the University's board of regents gathered to rename the chemical engineering building in honor of an alumnus and former faculty member whose influence extends far beyond campus, encompassing the entire field of chemical engineering.

The distinction was bestowed upon Neal Amundson, who led the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science from 1949 to 1975.

"The great feeling is impossible to describe," Amundson, now 87, recalls of the honor.

Born in 1916, Amundson grew up from modest beginnings in a middle-class St. Paul neighborhood. His father, Oscar, lacked any schooling; his mother, Hazel, had only a fifth-grade education; and none of his immediate family went to a university.

But when Amundson graduated from St. Paul Central High School, his father insisted that he attend the University to make a better living for himself. Amundson says he never considered attending any school other than the University of Minnesota, and that fall he enrolled at a tuition of only $32.40 per quarter.

A Promising Student

Amundson arrived at the University in 1933, unsure of the direction he wanted to take. His first inclination was to follow the advice of an uncle and major in civil engineering. Later he became acquainted with a few chemistry students and decided to switch to chemistry, he says, only to switch to chemical engineering because his "laboratory technique left much to be desired." At the time, success in organic chemistry required one to be a proficient glass blower, Amundson recalls.

During his freshman and sophomore years he worked part time as a janitor to earn money for tuition, fees, and books. After graduating from the University in 1937, Amundson worked for two years as a process control engineer at Standard Oil Company of Louisiana (now part of ExxonMobil). But he says he soon found that he "wasn't the corporate type" and returned to the University to complete a master's degree in chemical engineering in 1941 and a doctorate in mathematics in 1945.

A New Formula

When Amundson joined the University's chemical engineering faculty in 1947, chemical engineering education and research was, in his own words, "extremely dull" and lacked any rigorous form of analysis. Research focused on gathering empirical data for industrial applications and involved tedious tasks like determining heat and mass transfer coefficients.

In both undergraduate and graduate education, the focus was on industry. Students merely memorized facts about equipment and industrial processes, and laboratory work was based upon demonstrating procedures rather than principles.

"They trained students as if they all were going to work for the DuPont Company," Amundson would later recall. At the time, there was no study of transport processes, process control, fluid mechanics, or reaction engineering. In fact, Amundson was motivated to get his Ph.D. in mathematics in hopes of avoiding the tedium of this purely industrial form of chemical engineering.

But out of this distaste grew a new vision for chemical engineering. In his own research, Amundson wanted to move away from industrial chemistry, and he quickly became known for utilizing his background in mathematics to formulate new tools, techniques and insights for solving a wide range of complex, chemical engineering problems.

"What was pioneering [about Amundson's research] was introducing the idea of mathematics as a tool for studying the behavior of reactor systems," says Professor Ken Keller. "That was an enormous change that made our field a very dynamic field."

Amundson became known for pioneering the use of computers and applied mathematics to solve chemical engineering problems.

In 1956, when computers were still in their infancy, he formed an association with a computer company, Univac, to solve complex differential equations for distillation applications. This was at a time when results came out in the form of punch cards, Fortran had yet to be invented, and computers were so massive that they occupied the better part of a very large room.

Amundson also made dramatic advances in chromatography and ion exchange and modeled solid-fluid interactions in fixed and fluidized beds. He wrote a 12-part series of papers on his research on chemical reactor stability and control that totaled 287 pages in Chemical Engineering Science, a distinguished journal.

The insights gained from examining chemical engineering problems in a mathematical light was revolutionary for the field.

"Amundson has shown the power of mathematical methods, not so much in calculation or design, but mathematics in its penetrating powers of analysis, its ability to show the essence of a problem," says Professor Emeritus Rutherford Aris.

Amundson responds to such praise with humility. "Anybody with the training and interests that I had would have done the same thing," he says.

But Amundson's reforms didn't stop with his own research interests. A man of extraordinary vision and direction, he hoped to create an entirely new department.

Building a Winning Team

When Amundson became head of the chemical engineering department in 1949, it was a "third-rate, backwater" department located in the "bowels of Smith Hall," says Keller. At that time, the department consisted of seven faculty members (including Amundson), two instructors, 12 teaching assistants, a machinist, a secretary, and an annual budget of only $80,363. But soon after Amundson took the helm the department moved into a new 65,000-square foot-building that is now the east section of Amundson Hall. The new building marked the beginning of a new era for the department under Amundson's leadership.

During a sabbatical at Cambridge University from 1954 to 1955, Amundson started to formulate his designs for an ideal chemical engineering department, one with a faculty from diverse backgrounds that would "incorporate more of the fundamentals of mathematics, chemistry, and biology" to spark innovation to chemical engineering.

When he returned from Cambridge, he set out to fulfill this vision. His approach was simple yet daring: Single-handedly recruit a multidisciplinary collection of young professors, "retrofit" them as chemical engineers, and mobilize them to make breakthroughs in education and research. Amundson himself had been successful in applying mathematics to chemical engineering. Why couldn't the same be true for chemists, physicists, and other mathematicians?

Amundson embarked on an aggressive campaign to recruit the best and brightest scholars from a wide range of specialties in the hopes of finding new perspectives in dealing with common chemical engineering problems. His hires occured quickly and efficiently, and resulted in a flurry of young, first-rate hires.

He first hired microbiologist Henry Tsuchiya in 1957 and Aris, an English mathematician whom he'd met at Cambridge, in 1958. Later that year they were joined by fluid mechanics specialist Bill Ranz, bioengineer Arnie Fredrickson, and theoretical chemist John Dahler. L.E. "Skip" Scriven brought a diverse range of expertise in 1959, and chemical physicist Ted Davis (who is now IT dean) and biomedical engineer Ken Keller (who later served as the University's president) joined in 1963 and 1964, respectively. Lanny Schmidt and Bob Carr, who both had physical chemistry backgrounds, joined in 1965.

In 1970 the chemical engineering department merged with the materials science program, and Amundson hired Chris Macosko, whose polymer expertise cemented the two departments' ties.

Amundson, described as "quintessentially unbureaucratic," made strong-willed decisions based on quick-witted instincts. Unhindered by the large faculty search committees common today, he made all hiring decisions himself in the early part of his career, often deciding in one day.

Amundson relied on his strength as a judge of character and his exceptional vision for talent to guide his hiring choices.

Keller cites his own experience as an example of Amundson's informal but direct style. While he was a graduate student aat Johns Hopkins, Keller was invited to the University to give a seminar on his research. After the seminar, he spent two days meeting individually with the Minnesota faculty. What he didn't realize was that after he left each office, Amundson entered right behind him. When Keller visited Amundson at the end of his stay, Amundson told him: "The faculty and I have already talked about it, and we'd like to offer you a job. How much would you like to get paid?" Keller, surprised but ecstatic about the prospects of working under Amundson, accepted the offer without hesitation.

Fredrickson recounts a similar story. As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, he wrote a letter to Amundson showing interest in joining the Minnesota faculty. Amundson, who had known him when he worked as an undergraduate in his research lab, replied within one week: "Your salary is $6,000 a year. Be here on the 15th of September." Fredrickson joined the faculty soon afterwards.

Creating a Collegial Culture

From this motley crew of faculty, Amundson created a supportive atmosphere that emphasized collegiality and cooperation.

Amundson's "benevolent autocracy" combined quick decision making with close contact and communication with the faculty. The remarkable candor with which he communicated his vision to the faculty never stifled the responsiveness he had for their concerns. He used strength and sensitivity in forming a relationship built upon mutual trust.

"You worked hard, but you didn't feel like you were being judged," remembers Schmidt. "You felt like doing good stuff by inspiration and not by coercion."

This strong sense of collegiality set the foundation for collaborative work amongst the faculty members, which soon became a hallmark of the department.

Amundson promised that if the faculty trusted him to make decisions, he would bear most of the administrative burden of running the department so they could concentrate on teaching and research. The faculty were comforted by his practice of soliciting their opinions through informal discussions before making decisions himself.

"[Amundson] would come to my office, from the day I arrived as an untenured, assistant professor, and ask my advice. And he did that with all of the faculty. That was his mode of operation," recalls Davis.

But personal visits weren't the only method Amundson used to determine the pulse of the faculty. Every morning at 11:30 the faculty gathered at the Campus Club in Coffman Union to discuss departmental issues on an informal basis over lunch. Two tables were reserved to accommodate the entire chemical engineering faculty, and Amundson would hear everyone's point of view. This way, he would rarely have to call faculty meetings. Everyone knew what the others were thinking, based on these spirited, informal discussions.

The strong presence and respect that Amundson carried with him to these meetings was tempered by his modest ego.

"The first day you arrived, you had a vote and a voice equal to everyone else in the department," says Keller. "The assumption was you were a colleague and a peer."

Amundson's flexibility in exploring new directions and ideas for the department were firmly grounded in an unceasing devotion to high standards. From the beginning, he clearly communicated what he wanted to accomplish with the faculty.

"The high standard was superb teaching, attention to the department and research on very good problems," recalls Amundson.

By the late 1950s that standard had helped the department become one of the nation's top programs. Amundson says he's more proud of the department's success than of his individual achievements in research.

Team Teaching and Educational Reforms

An essential theme of Amundson's tenure was the emphasis he placed on nurturing young faculty. This was clearly illustrated by his implementation of team teaching, which was originally conceived at the University by Bill Ranz in 1959. Under this approach, one faculty member teaches a course's main lectures three times a week, and two or three others attend the lectures and conduct recitation sections of 15 to 20 students. Amundson recognized the idea's brilliance and quickly worked to rally the support of the rest of the faculty.

Team teaching allowed the younger faculty to learn the teaching techniques of the senior faculty, and gave them more time to establish their research programs. Moreover, it helped those faculty without formal training in chemical engineering learn the fundamentals before they taught them.

A typical junior faculty member would first serve as a recitation instructor for two to three years in a given course, lead lectures of the same course for the next two to three years, then move on to teaching recitations for another course. This way, many faculty members ended up teaching the entire chemical engineering curriculum without ever taking a chemical engineering course themselves. Faculty could also apply the principles that they learned through teaching to their research.

Fredrickson remembers that his "hair stood on end" when Amundson asked him to teach the chemical reactors course--a course Fredrickson had never taken himself. But Fredrickson gathered some of Amundson's papers on the subject and "worked like a dog" to lead the chemical reactor lectures for the next three years. He later applied the concepts he had learned through teaching his groundbreaking research into the kinetics and dynamics of biological populations.

Team teaching also set a high standard for quality instruction. "You never give a bad lecture in front of your colleagues," says Amundson. Professors often casually critiqued each other after class if lectures weren't clear, but the mutually supportive atmosphere in the department prevented any animosities, he says.

Amundson himself served as a model for senior faculty leadership. He continued teaching throughout his tenure as department head. He was renowned for his course, Applied Mathematics for Chemical Engineers and Scientists, which he fine-tuned over a period of 20 years. He also taught recitation sections in thermodynamics, fluid mechanics and process control. Amundson, always modest, described his own teaching as "not superb but definitely satisfactory."

In his early years as head, Amundson even created an undergraduate Chemical Engineering Council-- a student-faculty forum in which student-elected chemical engineering undergraduates would meet biweekly with Amundson in order to discuss student concerns.

Students benefited tremendously from the close contact with the faculty and the team teaching approach still remains a staple of the chemical engineering curriculum today.

Catalyst for Curricular Reform

Amundson's educational reforms didn't end with team teaching. Under his leadership the "grossly out-of-date" qualitative labs that taught memorization of specialized techniques (and that Amundson himself detested) were eliminated, along with courses in heat engines, machine design, drawing, and even German language.

The new curriculum mirrored many of the reforms Amundson had pioneered in his own research. Amundson, in conjunction with reforms implemented at the University of Wisconsin, created a curriculum that was "more systematic and fundamental" and emphasized quantitative mathematical analysis. Transport phenomena, thermodynamics, reactor analysis, and reactor control were all added to the undergraduate curriculum.

The changes were dramatic. "Not a single course that I taught had the same name as any I took as an undergraduate seven years earlier," says Keller.

A Man of Honor

Even while hiring and managing new faculty, reworking the curriculum, and teaching courses, Amundson continued to make advancements in his research, publishing more than 200 papers.

His honors include the Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Award from the American Chemical Society in 1960 and the William H. Walker Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in 1961. From 1955 to 1972, he served as the U.S. editor of Chemical Engineering Science. He has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 1967 the University honored Amundson with a Regents Professorship, its highest academic honor.

But in 1974, Amundson's trailblazing tenure as head of the chemical engineering department came to an end. He had grown weary of the University's increasing bureaucracy. He says he knew it was time to go.

In 1976, two years after he stepped down as head, Amundson left Minnesota for the University of Houston, where he still serves today.

Amundson Hall today

Three years later, during renovation of the chemical engineering building, Amundson's former colleagues successfully lobbied the board of regents to name the building Amundson Hall in honor of the man who served as their academic patriarch for 25 years.

Amundson--who has maintained a close relationship with the Minnesota faculty--was happy to return for the ceremony. University leaders, the chemical engineering faculty, and members of the IT community attended the ceremony, which took place in a lecture hall on the second floor of Amundson Hall. The inscription on the plaque presented to Amundson that day aptly commemorates his accomplishments at the University: He did far more than merely create a building, he created a great department.