Combustion and Flame 160 (2013) 993–994

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Combustion and Flame

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In Memoriam

Professor Felix J. Weinberg, FRS (1928–2012)

Felix Weinberg, Professor Emeritus and Distinguished ResearchFellow at Imperial College, passed away on December 5, 2012. Felixwas born in the Sudeten part of Czechoslovakia with a very happyearly childhood providing security and contentment. Circum-stances changed, beyond comprehension for those of us fortunateenough to be born in a different era, following the annexation ofSudetenland and the subsequent occupation of Czechoslovakia byNazi Germany. Felix subsequently lost his mother, his youngerbrother and other members of his family under horrific anddegrading circumstances in Nazi camps. Felix spent three yearsin a series of concentration camps, Terezin, Auschwitz-Birkenau,Blechhammer, Gross–Rosen and Buchenwald. He also survivedthe Death March from Blechhammer in 1945. Felix never spokemuch of this time apart from making the observation that otherholocaust survivors, such as Primo Levi, could not safely revisitmemories. Despite such reservations and at the insistence of a fam-ily friend, Ms Bea Green, Felix eventually wrote his memoirs (Boy30529: A Memoir) with the final corrected proofs submitted tothe publishers a few days before his death. Publication is scheduledfor Spring 2013. A direct consequence of his early life is that Felixdid not receive any formal education beyond the age of 12. He ar-rived in Britain in a stripped out Lancaster bomber on VJ Day, un-able to speak English and having forgotten how to write.

Felix was determined to triumph over the barbarism of the waryears and to overcome the resulting darkness. As a result, he wasdesperately keen to make up for lost years and completed an exter-nal general science degree at London University, fell in love withphysics and completed a second degree in the subject. During hisstudies he met the kind and generous Jill, the love of his life, soonto become his wife. Felix arrived at Imperial College to completehis PhD on the structure of flames and was employed as a researchassistant in the Department of Chemical Engineering and ChemicalTechnology in 1951. Felix rose rapidly through the ranks as assis-tant Lecturer, Lecturer and Senior Lecturer (Combustion) to Reader

in Combustion in 1964. Within three years, his appointment wasconverted to a personal Chair. By then his reputation was alreadywell established and together with the spectroscopist Dick Gaydonhe founded a school in Combustion Physics that lasted for a quarterof a century and provided training for researchers several of whomsubsequently achieved leading positions in the subject.

Felix was a pioneer in key areas of combustion science andmade seminal contributions to subjects as diverse as the develop-ment of optical methods for diagnostics and the influence of elec-trical fields on flames. He published over 220 papers as well aswriting or co-writing a number of books. The early research focuson the structure of flames, as dictated by their charge generation,led him to develop specific understanding and expertise on howto analyse and control flame behaviour by electrical diagnosticsand the application of electrical fields. Felix adopted the ‘‘we neverclosed’’ approach to retirement, and it is fitting that his last paperappears with a 2013 dateline in the 34th Proceedings of the Com-bustion Institute [34 (2013) 3295–3301]. Sadly, we missed himvery much in Warsaw. His first publication at this Bienniale Festelies in the Fourth volume. This last paper (as far as we are aware)marked a return to one of his first loves, with the title ‘‘Electricalaspects of flame quenching,’’ and amongst the co-authors is hisold friend and collaborator Fred Carleton. He was also a pioneerin the area of laser development/application and recognised thesignificant opportunities these instruments offered for rapid flameand plasma initiation as well as diagnostics. The research topics ex-plored included flames in micro-gravity, with a large body of workrelated to combustion applications under such conditions. Novelcontributions were also made to the use of focused laser-beamsfor ignition. A substantial amount of pioneering work was alsomade on heat recuperating burners, inspiring a current generationof combustion researchers to explore the design of portable micro-combustors for heat and power generation. The potential of novelgas explosion mechanisms depending on thermal radiation wasalso explored. This area has recently received new impetus follow-ing challenges associated with the use of conventional theories toexplain some large-scale episodal vapour cloud explosions. Fromthe mid-eighties he was also much occupied with the developmentof spouted bed burners for which he saw great potential for thecombustion of low-grade fuels. This work has subsequently comemuch to fore in the context of waste or bio-derived sources for re-duced carbon dioxide emissions. Extensive studies were also per-formed on the use of plasma-jet ignition devices for aerospaceand automotive applications. A particular feature of Felix’s re-search was his ability to consistently surprise by approaching top-ics from a different viewpoint, and to initiate new researchdirections in combustion physics as a result. Felix’s innovativework was recognised with numerous awards and honours,including:

994 In Memoriam / Combustion and Flame 160 (2013) 993–994

� DSc from the University of London (1961).� The Silver Medal (with Mike Fox) of the Combustion Insti-

tute ‘‘for an outstanding paper from the previous Combus-tion Symposium’’ (1972).

� The Bernard Lewis Gold Medal of the Combustion Institutefor the ‘‘adaptation of physical measurements to flame pro-cesses’’ (1980).

� Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (1983).� The Rumford Medal of the Royal Society in (1988).� DSc Honoris Causa from the Technion, Haifa (1990).� The Italgas Prize for Energy Sciences (1991).� The Smolenski Medal of the Polish Academy of Sciences

(1999).� Elected Foreign Associate, US National Academy of Engi-

neering (2001).� The Huw Edwards Award from the Institute of Physics

(2005).

Felix was a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, where he wasinstrumental in setting up the Combustion Physics group, and aFellow of the Institute of Energy. He also served as a board memberof the Combustion Institute and was an honorary board member ofthe British Section of the Combustion Institute even after his for-mal membership term was completed.

For all his reputation and international esteem he always cameacross as a modest and unassuming man. His lectures were the es-sence of informality, often using a single transparency that con-tained in a multiple of simple hand-made drawings the core ofwhat in a slow articulating voice he would want to explain. Hecould captivate students and conference attendances alike. Felixwas dedicated to his students and worked hard for their success.He is still well-remembered for coming to the rescue of a post-graduate at Imperial College, who was publicly and seriously crit-icised by a more outspoken professorial colleague, with a commentfrom Chinese philosophy ‘‘not to stamp on flowers if one wantsthem to grow’’. Felix’s humanity was matched by a wonderfulsense of humour. The paper associated with the Hottel Lecturedelivered at the 15th International Symposium on Combustionprovides just a glimpse.

‘‘According to Greek mythology, Prometheus brought man the firehe stole from Zeus, the deity in charge of lightning and thunder-bolts. Prior to that step in our evolution, when Zeus set fire to a treewith one of his thunderbolts, early man was suitably terrified bythis fire of the gods and did not stay around long enough to doany experiments’’.

Sometimes the enthusiasm for correcting this historical error byearly man could go a little bit wrong. Jeff Jagoda, one of Felix’s Ph.D.graduates, recalls ‘‘the occasion on which the London constabularycame looking for us one Guy Fawkes night in Felix’s backyard. Atthat occasion we were tying fireworks to balloons filled with he-lium kindly provided by Imperial College. Their effect, once theyhad risen to a few hundred feet, was quite spectacular. Unfortu-nately no one realised (or remembered) that Felix’s house was lo-cated directly under one of the main flight paths into Heathrowairport.’’ An arguably better experiment was the truly high-flyingexample of putting a simple candle in zero gravity (courtesy ofNASA) to produce a spherical flame shape, subsequently

reproduced in Nature – a brilliant example of how to design anexperiment that would have intrigued our ancestors prior to New-ton’s fascination with apples. Such experiments demonstrate hisnatural inquisitiveness and, importantly, a sense of fun towardscience.

Felix was a very strong supporter of the free and collective ex-change of scientific information. He was a driving force behind anationally organised scheduling of subject meetings. In his emeri-tus years he would almost without fail attend lunchtime groupseminars, where – with his sandwiches in front of him – he wouldlisten to presentations by postgraduates or staff and lead the Q&Asessions with mind-broadening questions or comments. During hiscareer, Felix attracted many very distinguished visitors from thecombustion community to Imperial College, including Mel Branch,Robert Cheng, Jerry Colver, Bob Dibble, Don Hardesty, Jeff Jagoda,John Lee, Tony Oppenheim, Paul Ronney, Bob Saywer, Tadao Take-no and Ben Zinn. They, like many of Felix’s colleagues and students,retain warm memories not only of scientific stimulation but also ofhospitality received at his home. Jill was not interested in combus-tion – the many hours of their Alpine honeymoon that she spentdecoking the cylinder of his Francis–Barnett motorcycle with herhairpins may have been to blame – but she adopted his associatesand their wives as an extended family, introducing them to the cul-tural side, and particularly to the theatres, of London. (Felix did notmuch care for theatre, observing that he had seen enough of thedarker side of life already.) Many of these friendships enduredfor years or decades after the research projects that had engen-dered them. Perhaps not surprising, given that the hospitality in-cluded ensuring financial solvency for visitors during the postalstrike of 1971 and Jill knitting a heavy wool sweater for a not suit-ably dressed Californian during the 1978 winter of discontent.

Felix is survived by his sons, Peter, Professor of CardiovascularMechanics at Imperial College, John, a marine biologist at the JointNature Conservation Committee, and Michael, an Event Productionspecialist. His beloved wife Jill passed away in 2006.

We are grateful to Peter Weinberg for sharing personal memo-ries, Derek Bradley, Carol and Don Hardesty, Barbara and Bob Saw-yer and colleagues at Imperial College, in particular, Alan Jones,Rafael Kandiyoti and Hans Michels for providing their thoughts.

We all had the privilege to know Felix and are left with a senseof awe. The memory remains of a brilliant scientist, a meticulousscholar and, above all, a decent and good man. In particular, wemiss his astonishing sense of humour, clear-eyed intelligence andlove of life. Felix to us represents the victory of what is good in hu-man nature over what is not.

Peter LindstedtDepartment of Mechanical Engineering,

Imperial College,Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK

E-mail address: p.lindstedt@imperial.ac.uk

Derek Dunn-RankinDepartment of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering,

University of California,Irvine, CA 92697-3975, USA

E-mail address: ddunnran@uci.edu

Available online 24 March 2013