It is with great sad­ness that we announce the pass­ing of George W. Roberts, Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Chem­i­cal and Bio­mol­e­c­u­lar Engi­neer­ing, North Car­oli­na State Uni­ver­si­ty. George suc­cumbed from pan­cre­at­ic can­cer on 5 April 2010 in Raleigh, North Car­oli­na. He fought bold­ly to spare his fam­i­ly the excep­tion­al pain of this ordeal. 

Prof. Roberts made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions in both the indus­tri­al and aca­d­e­m­ic aspects of catal­y­sis espe­cial­ly in under­stand­ing the behav­ior of cat­alyt­ic reac­tors (cat­alyt­ic reac­tion engi­neer­ing). He strong­ly encour­aged his stu­dents to study sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems fac­ing indus­tri­al needs which broad­ened their edu­ca­tion and pre­pared them for future careers. 

George was born in Newark, New Jer­sey. He received the B.ChE. degree from Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty in 1961 and the Sc.D. degree in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing in 1965 from Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy. His research advi­sor at MIT was Prof. Charles N. Sat­ter­field, a dis­tin­guished schol­ar in the field of catal­y­sis and the author of four books deal­ing with catal­y­sis and cat­alyt­ic process­es. From 1965 to 1969, Prof. Roberts was a Research Engi­neer and lat­er a Projects Super­vi­sor with the Rohm and Haas Com­pa­ny in Philadel­phia. He then joined the Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty (St. Louis) as an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor, where he found­ed and direct­ed the Chem­i­cal Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing Lab­o­ra­to­ry. He received the Dis­tin­guished Fac­ul­ty Award from Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in 1971. 

Prof. Roberts joined Engel­hard in Men­lo Park, NJ in 1972 as Man­ag­er of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Research, and was respon­si­ble for lead­ing sev­er­al pro­grams that result­ed in the devel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of new cat­a­lysts and cat­alyt­ic process­es, In the mid-1970’s he head­ed a research team that devel­oped a new Pt/Re cat­a­lyst for naph­tha reform­ing with sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er sta­bil­i­ty than its com­mer­cial pre­de­ces­sor. His team also devel­oped an improved aro­mat­ic iso­mer­iza­tion cat­a­lyst for the pro­duc­tion of xylenes, based on mol­e­c­u­lar sieve tech­nol­o­gy. He then led a research effort in selec­tive hydro­gena­tion of var­i­ous streams derived from steam crack­ing of liq­ue­fied petro­le­um gas (LPG) and naph­tha. Two new process­es were com­mer­cial­ized. He led the devel­op­ment of a new, low-pol­lu­tion com­bus­tion process based on com­bin­ing cat­alyt­ic and homo­ge­neous (ther­mal) com­bus­tion. His group at Engel­hard devel­oped the cat­alyt­ic tech­nol­o­gy that result­ed in the suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion of selec­tive oxi­da­tion of CO in the pres­ence of H2 as a means for debug­ging ammo­nia plants. This process was suc­cess­ful­ly oper­at­ed in sev­er­al domes­tic ammo­nia plants begin­ning in the late-1970’s. More­over, the research lead­ing to this process pro­vid­ed a sound tech­ni­cal foun­da­tion for the renewed study of selec­tive oxi­da­tion of CO, as part of the pro­duc­tion of H2 for use in fuel cells being used today.

From 1977 to 1989, Prof. Roberts held var­i­ous posi­tions in tech­nol­o­gy man­age­ment at Air Prod­ucts and Chem­i­cals, Inc. in Allen­town, PA. His two most notable achieve­ments were lead­ing the teams that devel­oped and com­mer­cial­ized the COPETM process for debot­tle­neck­ing Claus sul­fur recov­ery plants and the LPMeO­HTM process for methanol syn­the­sis. The COPETM process was first com­mer­cial­ized by East­man Chem­i­cal at its coal gasi­fi­ca­tion facil­i­ty in Kingsport, TN. This process has been suc­cess­ful­ly used in a num­ber of Claus plants, and won the 1987 Kirk­patrick Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Achieve­ment Award from Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing magazine. 

In 1989, he joined North Car­oli­na State Uni­ver­si­ty as Pro­fes­sor and Head of the Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment. He stepped down as Depart­ment Head in 1994 to devote him­self to research and teach­ing. Prof. Roberts received an Out­stand­ing Teacher Award in 2001–2002 and the Alcoa Foun­da­tion Engi­neer­ing Research Award in 2006. Although he offi­cial­ly retired from the Uni­ver­si­ty in 2007, becom­ing Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus, George con­tin­ued to be active in research and recent­ly pub­lished a text­book. Chem­i­cal Reac­tions and Chem­i­cal Reac­tors (John Wiley & Sons, 2008) is designed pri­mar­i­ly for the chem­i­cal reac­tion engi­neer­ing (“kinet­ics”) course that is required in almost every chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing cur­ricu­lum, inter­na­tion­al­ly. Prof. Roberts’ book rec­og­nizes explic­it­ly that 80–90% of indus­tri­al reac­tions involve catal­y­sis, pri­mar­i­ly het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. There­fore, het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis is intro­duced very ear­ly, and the book con­tains exten­sive treat­ments of the fun­da­men­tals of cat­alyt­ic kinet­ics and the role of trans­port effects in het­ero­ge­neous catalysis. 

Prof. Roberts had more than 75 ref­er­eed jour­nal pub­li­ca­tions, 11 ref­er­eed chap­ters in books, and 20 issued US patents on top­ics such as cat­alyt­ic com­bus­tion, methanol syn­the­sis, hydro­gen gen­er­a­tion, and cat­alyt­ic poly­mer hydro­gena­tion. His most recent catal­y­sis research focused on three very nov­el and chal­leng­ing problems:

1. Hydro­gena­tion of var­i­ous poly­mers with pre­cious met­al cat­a­lysts in order to cre­ate nov­el poly­mer­ic mate­ri­als that are dif­fi­cult to syn­the­size by poly­mer­iza­tion of the appro­pri­ate monomers.
2. The direct reac­tion of car­bon diox­ide with methane to form acetic acid, and the direct reac­tion of car­bon diox­ide, methane and acety­lene to form vinyl acetate. This is a poten­tial­ly impor­tant approach to recy­cling car­bon diox­ide by using it as a car­bon source in chem­i­cal synthesis.
3. Cat­alyt­ic reac­tions in super­crit­i­cal fluids.

George was a qui­et leader of our com­mu­ni­ty and will be great­ly missed. His con­tri­bu­tions will con­tin­ue to influ­ence new cat­alyt­ic research.
 
Pre­pared by Robert J. Far­rauto, BASF (bob.farrauto@basf.com) 10 April 2010
Sub­mit­ted by H. Hen­ry Lamb, NCSU (lamb@ncsu.edu) 22 April 2010

Pro­fes­sor Jerzy Haber (1930–2010), an out­stand­ing sci­en­tist, Leader and Tutor of many gen­er­a­tions of Pol­ish chemists, a remark­able organ­is­er of research, died on Jan­u­ary 1, 2010. He was an inter­na­tion­al­ly acclaimed spe­cial­ist in sol­id state chem­istry, catal­y­sis and sur­face phe­nom­e­na who cre­at­ed and direct­ed for many years the Insti­tute of Catal­y­sis and Sur­face Chem­istry of Pol­ish Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in Krakow.

Jerzy Haber was born on May 7, 1930 in Krakow and linked with this city his entire pro­fes­sion­al and pri­vate life. Here, in 1951, he grad­u­at­ed in chem­istry from the Fac­ul­ty of Math­e­mat­ics, Physics and Chem­istry of the Jagiel­lon­ian Uni­ver­si­ty. After grad­u­a­tion, he took posi­tion of a research assis­tant at the AGH Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy in Krakow, work­ing on physi­co-chem­i­cal prop­er­ties of tran­si­tion met­al oxides in the research group of Pro­fes­sor Adam Bielañs­ki. In his research, he demon­strat­ed a cor­re­la­tion between changes in their elec­tron prop­er­ties and cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ty (A.Bielañski, J. Dereñ, J. Haber, Nature 179 (1957) 668). This was one of the first exper­i­men­tal con­fir­ma­tions of the elec­tron the­o­ry of catal­y­sis in the world. His doc­tor­al the­sis ‘A rela­tion­ship between the elec­tric con­duc­tiv­i­ty of a work­ing cat­a­lyst and its cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ty’, accom­plished at the age of 26, con­cerned the same subject.
In 1960–1961, he stayed as a post­doc­tor­al fel­low at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol, where he under­took with Pro­fes­sor F. S. Stone a pio­neer­ing at that time research on the inter­pre­ta­tion of pho­toad­sorp­tion and pho­to­catal­y­sis on the basis of the crys­tal field the­o­ry, the results of which have been quot­ed until today in the text­books and mono­graphs (J. Haber, F.S. Stone, Trans. Fara­day Soc. 59 (1963) 19).

On his return to Poland, he con­tin­ued his work at the AGH Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy until 1968 first as a research fel­low and then as an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor. He was an excel­lent lec­tur­er. His lec­tures on phys­i­cal chem­istry attract­ed crowds of stu­dents of var­i­ous depart­ments of the university.

In 1968, he was appoint­ed direc­tor of an inde­pen­dent Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Catal­y­sis and Sur­face Chem­istry of Pol­ish Acad­e­my of Sci­ences (since 1978, the Insti­tute). The Insti­tute was Jerzy Haber’s life accom­plish­ment. He mas­ter­mind­ed the con­cept of cre­at­ing a plat­form for a mutu­al exchange of ideas and research in the entire area of the phys­i­cal chem­istry of gas-sol­id, gas-liq­uid and sol­id-sol­id inter­faces. He stood behind the spec­tac­u­lar devel­op­ment of the Insti­tute which start­ed in a few rent­ed premis­es with 28 mem­bers of staff, includ­ing just 5 in catal­y­sis sen­su stricte, and attained dur­ing 30 years its own impres­sive build­ing, unique research equip­ment and almost 100 mem­bers of staff, includ­ing 15 pro­fes­sors and asso­ci­at­ed pro­fes­sors, spe­cial­is­ing in diverse aspects of catal­y­sis, sur­face chem­istry and col­loids. In spite of dif­fi­cult times of polit­i­cal­ly divid­ed Europe, the Insti­tute has become an ele­ment in the inter­na­tion­al research net­work, a place of free flow of ideas, open to con­tacts with the entire world, a true cen­tre of excel­lence in its area.

At the Insti­tute, Jerzy Haber ini­ti­at­ed and devel­oped broad research, both fun­da­men­tal and applied, in diverse areas of het­ero­ge­neous and homoge­nous catal­y­sis, as well as sol­id state chem­istry applied to catal­y­sis. In par­tic­u­lar, his research con­cerned oxide sys­tems – cat­a­lysts of the selec­tive oxi­da­tion process­es, as well as zeo­lites, cat­a­lysts based on met­al­lo-organ­ic com­plex­es, and cat­a­lysts used in the envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, to men­tion just the most impor­tant research directions.

The inves­ti­ga­tions have led to the for­mu­la­tion of a the­o­ry of cat­alyt­ic oxi­da­tion of hydro­car­bons and have intro­duced into the world lit­er­a­ture the con­cept of elec­trophilic and nucle­ophilic oxi­da­tion. The clas­si­fi­ca­tion revealed a cor­re­la­tion between the cat­alyt­ic prop­er­ties of tran­si­tion met­al oxides and their struc­ture, and has become foun­da­tion of the sci­ence-based selec­tion of the cat­a­lysts. Pro­fes­sor Haber demon­strat­ed that the abil­i­ty of oxides of tran­si­tion met­als of groups V – VII to add selec­tive­ly oxy­gen atoms to the hydro­car­bon chain of an organ­ic mol­e­cule is linked with the phe­nom­e­non of crys­tal shear­ing. Inves­ti­ga­tions of sin­gle-crys­tal oxide cat­a­lysts have led to a gen­er­al con­clu­sion that the con­sec­u­tive ele­men­tary steps of the cat­alyt­ic reac­tion may pro­ceed on dif­fer­ent crys­tal faces (struc­ture-sen­si­tive reactions).

Jerzy Haber was first in the world to ini­ti­ate research on the descrip­tion of ele­men­tary steps of the reac­tion of cat­alyt­ic oxi­da­tion of hydro­car­bons using quan­tum chem­i­cal meth­ods. They revealed that the reac­tion path depends on the ori­en­ta­tion of react­ing mol­e­cules one with respect to anoth­er and to the cat­a­lyst sur­face which under­goes restructuring.

The inves­ti­ga­tions on the homoge­nous reac­tions of hydro­car­bon oxi­da­tion with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of tran­si­tion met­al por­phyrins as mod­el cat­a­lysts, allowed reveal­ing role of the elec­tron struc­ture of tran­si­tion met­al ions as active cen­tres for these reac­tions, and for­mu­lat­ing the mech­a­nism of ini­ti­a­tion of the chain reac­tions and the chain devel­op­ment step.

Jerzy Haber was active­ly com­mit­ted to organ­is­ing research in Poland, among oth­er by coor­di­nat­ing the nation­al research pro­gramme in catal­y­sis. Since 1971 he was full pro­fes­sor in chem­i­cal sci­ences, since 1973 a cor­re­spond­ing mem­ber and since1983 a full mem­ber of the Pol­ish Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, since 1990 a mem­ber of the Pre­sid­i­um of the Acad­e­my, Pres­i­dent of the Krakow Branch of the Acad­e­my since 2003, a full mem­ber of the Pol­ish Acad­e­my of Arts and Sci­ences since 1991, the direc­tor of its Class of Math­e­mat­ics, Physics and Chem­istry, 1999–2008, a found­ing mem­ber of the Pol­ish Club of Catal­y­sis and its Pres­i­dent, 1992–2007, a mem­ber of Research Coun­cil to the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic, 1991–95, a mem­ber of the Cen­tral Com­mis­sion for Research Degrees, 1975–81 and 2000-06, and a mem­ber of the Nation­al Coun­cil of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion, 1991–2002. For his research and admin­is­tra­tive activ­i­ty, he was award­ed among oth­ers the doc­tor­ate hon­oris causa by the Marie Curie-Sklodows­ka Uni­ver­si­ty in Lublin, the Research Prize of the Prime Min­is­ter, the Com­man­der Cross with Star of the Order of Polo­nia Restituta.

Excel­lent eru­di­tion, organ­i­sa­tion­al tal­ents, flu­en­cy in sev­er­al lan­guages, friend­ly atti­tude to all, final­ly ease in estab­lish­ing con­tacts and social skills made Jerzy Haber a val­ued mem­ber of many inter­na­tion­al bod­ies and a pop­u­lar lec­tur­er. He hold a num­ber of func­tions in inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions and organ­i­sa­tions: among oth­ers Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee of Reac­tiv­i­ty of Solids, 1976–84, Vice-Pres­i­dent of the Com­mis­sion on Col­loid and Sur­face Chem­istry Includ­ing Catal­y­sis IUPAC, 1977–87, Pres­i­dent of the Sub­com­mit­tee of Cat­a­lysts Char­ac­ter­i­za­tion IUPAC, 1978–90, Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al Coun­cil of Catal­y­sis, 1988–92 and Vice-Pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties, 1997–99. The French Chem­i­cal Soci­ety award­ed him the Pierre et Marie Curie Prize and the Ger­man Soci­ety of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Biotech­nol­o­gy — the medal of Alwin Mit­tasch. He was doc­tor hon­oris causa of the Uni­ver­sité Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, mem­ber of the Acad­e­mia Euro­pea and the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ence of Ukraine. He received the Order of the Aca­d­e­m­ic Palms of the French Republic.

Jerzy Haber was wide­ly acclaimed in Poland and world­wide as author of sci­en­tif­ic papers: he pub­lished near­ly 530 orig­i­nal papers and 6 books, received more than 50 patents, pre­sent­ed 115 ple­nary and invit­ed lec­tures at inter­na­tion­al con­gress­es. He super­vised 30 doc­tor­al projects and was mem­ber of edi­to­r­i­al boards of many sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals, includ­ing the most impor­tant ones for his research area: Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis (1976–82), Catal­y­sis Reviews, Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing (1976–85), Reac­tion Kinet­ics and Catal­y­sis Let­ters (od 1976), Jour­nal of Chem­i­cal Tech­nol­o­gy and Biotech­nol­o­gy (since 1979), Pol­ish Jour­nal of Applied Chem­istry (since 1979), Revue de Chimie Minerale/European Jour­nal of Sol­id State Chemistry/Solid State Sci­ences (since 1980), Applied Catal­y­sis (1981–84), Bul­letin of the Pol­ish Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, Chem­i­cal Series (1981–2004), Reac­tiv­i­ty of Solids (1985–90), Catal­y­sis Let­ters (since 1987), Bul­letin des Sociétés Chim­iques Belges (1991–1997), Pol­ish Jour­nal of Chem­istry (1992–1996), Comptes Ren­dus de l’A­cad­e­mie de Sci­ences, Paris (since 1998).

Cit­i­zen of the world, invit­ed to con­gress­es and meet­ings to all cor­ners of the globe, vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor of the uni­ver­si­ties in Bel­gium, France, Japan and Cana­da, he remained dur­ing all his life close­ly linked to his native Poland and city of Krakow. Enthu­si­as­tic con­nois­seur of art and his­toric mon­u­ments, he ini­ti­at­ed at his Insti­tute mod­ern research on the dete­ri­o­ra­tion mech­a­nisms and pro­tec­tion of his­toric objects and sup­port­ed the activ­i­ties of the Coun­cil of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion in Krakow. A reg­u­lar con­cert- and art exhi­bi­tion-goer. From his trav­els all over the world, he was return­ing to his beau­ti­ful house in Krakow, gar­den, dogs, exquis­ite library, col­lec­tion of prints and maps, with a pro­fes­sion­al col­lec­tion of views of his city. Charm­ing host of social meet­ings, pos­sess­ing a rare tal­ent of lis­ten­ing to the oth­ers. He is sur­vived by his wife Han­na, an archi­tect and art-lover, a con­stant com­pan­ion in all his undertakings.
 
Writ­ten by friends
Feb­ru­ary 2010