Octave, Live(d) In Manila
For every chemical engineering student (or graduate), the name Octave Levenspiel will always ring a bell. Levenspiel’s pioneering textbook Chemical Reaction Engineering is a citation classic and has been required or used as reference in every course in chemical reaction engineering or reaction kinetics and reactor design.
I have an interesting trivia about the author. I got to know this while searching for some literature for the technical article I was writing. It’s a brief write up about Levenspiel, written by his colleagues as a tribute. Entitled In Honor of Octave Levenspiel, the article featured some facts about the author that many followers of his textbook or body of work didn’t know. What follows is one trivia that, I guess, is most interesting (at least) to us chemical engineering students and graduates in the Philippines. I learned that Levenspiel was sent to Manila in 1941 by his father, who was in Shanghai, China that time. The reason for sending him to Manila was not clear. Not knowing anyone in Manila, which to him was a strange land, and with just the clothes he was wearing, he was stranded there at the time when US commenced participation in WWII. Many, including himself, I guess, believe that the experience is a great credit to his ingenuity that he survived there about a year, eventually returning to Shanghai.
He must be tough.
I have an interesting trivia about the author. I got to know this while searching for some literature for the technical article I was writing. It’s a brief write up about Levenspiel, written by his colleagues as a tribute. Entitled In Honor of Octave Levenspiel, the article featured some facts about the author that many followers of his textbook or body of work didn’t know. What follows is one trivia that, I guess, is most interesting (at least) to us chemical engineering students and graduates in the Philippines. I learned that Levenspiel was sent to Manila in 1941 by his father, who was in Shanghai, China that time. The reason for sending him to Manila was not clear. Not knowing anyone in Manila, which to him was a strange land, and with just the clothes he was wearing, he was stranded there at the time when US commenced participation in WWII. Many, including himself, I guess, believe that the experience is a great credit to his ingenuity that he survived there about a year, eventually returning to Shanghai.
He must be tough.
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