In Memory of Prof. Mooson Kwauk--颗粒学报PARTICUOLOGY

Prof. Mooson Kwauk, founder and Editor-in-Chief of Particuology, passed away peacefully due to illness on November 20, 2012 in Beijing at the age of 92. His funeral was held at Beijing Babaoshan Cemetery on November 26, attended by more than 1000 mourners.

Mooson was born in Hanyang, Hubei Province, China, on June 24, 1920, and raised in Shanghai. His father was a senior engineer and government official; his mother was a teacher. After graduating from the University of Shanghai with a degree in chemistry in 1943, he completed his master's degree in chemical engineering under the supervision of Prof. Richard H. Wilhelm at Princeton University in 1946, publishing a paper entitled “Fluidization of Solid Particles” in 1948. It was this paper that was to prove his greatest success in fluidization, classifying the first time two distinctive modes of fluidization: aggregative and particulate.

Leaving Princeton, Mooson joined Hydrocarbon Research Inc. in New York in 1946, working as an engineer in the Process Development Department on projects for coal gasification, air separation, gas purification and gaseous reduction of iron ores. From 1948 to 1952, he served Coca-Cola Export Corporation, building the first bottling plant in India. From 1952, he resumed his career at HRI until he returned to China.

In 1956, Mooson returned to China with his family. After settling in Beijing and starting to serve Chinese Academy of Sciences, he helped found the Institute of Chemical Metallurgy (renamed Institute of Process Engineering in 2001), where he remained until his retirement. In IPE, he set up the first fluidization research laboratory in China; In 1984, he built the first particle research lab in China; In 1986, he founded the Chinese Society of Particuology and acted as the president until 2002; In 1988, he convened the China-Japan-USA Trilateral Symposium on Particuology in Beijing; In 1997, he initiated the Young Scientist Award in Particuology using his own savings.

Mooson was one of the leading scientists in chemical engineering, especially in the fields of fluidization and particuology. As an extension of his research in the US, he proposed the theory of generalized fluidization to elucidate complex fluidization phenomena in various combinations of solid and fluid flows, and applied this theory into practical projects, such as upgrading low-grade iron ores and separating nonferrous metals, which was the first of its kind in the field of fluidization. Afterward, he developed and validated the concept of bubbleless gas-solids to form a comprehensive system of theory and technology. In 1992, he published his masterpiece summarizing his research work over the past decades, the book “FLUIDIZATION: Idealized and Bubbleless, with Applications”. Under his guidance, the Energy-Minimization Multi-Scale (EMMS) method was developed which is now widely used in computational fluid mechanics and other fields. In 2008, after eight-year efforts, together with a group of scientists and engineers, he published “Handbook of Fluidization”, which was generally recognized as a milestone in the field of chemical engineering in China. Mooson's pioneering achievements have won him two times the China National Natural Science Awards, in 1982 and 1990, and have earned him great acclaim from the scientific community as well, among them, being elected the Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 1980; receiving the International Fluidization Award of Achievement at FLUIDIZATION VI in Banff, Canada, in 1989; being rewarded the Prize of HLHL Foundation for Scientific and Technological Progress in 1994; being elected the Fellow of Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences in 1997. In 2008, he was selected by AIChE as one of the Fifty Chemical Engineers of the Foundation Age for his “leadership in fluidization, chemical reaction engineering and extractive metallurgy”.

Mooson retired as the director of IPE in 1986, but he never ceased his pursuit and service. He launched the journal Particuology in 2003 at the age of 83. For the ten volumes published in the past ten years, in addition to his many responsibilities of supervising the editorial process as Editor-in-Chief, he edited nearly every paper to ensure that both the technical contents and the language were qualified. “In all my life I never presented second-class products to my nation and people. The journal I run would never present second-class paper to my readers.” he said in an interview in 2011. With his tremendous efforts, Particuology has become a well-known international journal with high academic quality.

As Isaac Newton once said, “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Now, we lost the strong shoulder we had always been relying on. We cherish the days when Mooson was with us. Mooson's legacy will inspire us to follow in his footsteps to maintain the high standard he set for Particuology. We would endeavor to take the journal to new heights in the future and to provide the best service to our readers and authors forever.

The world has lost a great man of science. We have lost a revered colleague. But most of all, his family have lost a devoted father and loving husband. He is survived by Huichun Kwei, his beloved wife, three children, and six grandchildren. Our hearts go out to them.

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