Hassan Aref

Hassan Aref ( born September 20, 1950 in Alexandria, † 9 September 2011 in De Land, Illinois ) was an Egyptian- American engineer and physicist who was concerned with hydrodynamics. He was a professor at Virginia Tech.

Aref studied at the University of Copenhagen with the candidate 's degree ( Cand Sci. ) In physics and mathematics in 1975 (at the Niels Bohr Institute) and in 1980 received his doctorate from Cornell University with Eric Dean Siggia in Physics ( Turbulence and vortex dynamics in two dimensions ). In 1980 he became assistant professor of engineering at Brown University and in 1984 to 1994 he was at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 1985 he became associate professor and later professor at the University of California, San Diego ( both in the Department of Applied Mechanics and Geophysics ). 1989 to 1992 he was chief scientist at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. He was Professor and Head of the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the University of Illinois at Urbana -Champaign in 1992. From 2003 he was at Virginia Tech, where he was Chairman from 2003 to 2005 Faculty of Engineering. He died of an aortic dissection.

In 1986 he was a visiting professor at the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby and again in 2006 ( Niels Bohr Visiting Professor ). In 1986 he became a foreign member of the Danish Centre for Applied Mathematics and Mechanics.

He dealt with theoretical hydrodynamics, especially vortex motion and their numerical simulation. He is considered the founder of the concept of chaotic advection, the training of chaotic trajectories in otherwise laminar flows.

In 2011 he received the GI Taylor Medal, in 2000 he received the Otto Laporte Award, in 1985 he received the Presidential Young Investigator Award and in 1988 he was Lecturer Corrsin. He was a Fellow of the American Physical Society (1988) and the American Academy of Mechanics ( 2000).

Before he became a U.S. citizen in 1998, he had Canadian citizenship.

In 2000 he was president of the 20th International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in Chicago and he was Chairman of the U.S. National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. By David G. Crighton, he was a founding editor of the Cambridge Texts in Applied Mathematics.

1984 to 1994 he was Associate Editor of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

He was married to Susanne Eriksen since 1974 and had two sons.

Writings

• Stirring by chaotic advection, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Volume 143, 1984, pp. 1-21
• Publisher Chaos Applied to fluid mixing, Special Issue Chaos, Solitons and Fractals, Pergamon Press 1994
• Publisher 150 years of vortex dynamics, IUTAM Symposium, Lyngby, Springer Verlag 2010