description abstract | This Special Issue honors and celebrates the career of Professor Ivan Catton, an internationally acclaimed expert in the field of thermal science and engineering and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was active in research for over five decades and worked in many different areas. The originality, analytical treatment and physical reasoning presented in his papers were impressive. He contributed extensively to natural convection, instability, porous media transport, nuclear reactor thermal-hydraulics and safety, materials processing, and aerospace heat transfer, among others. In each of these areas, he made important innovative fundamental contributions. His work spans a wide range of problems, from basic to applied, and, consequently, his papers are widely cited around the world. Some of his papers, such as his keynote paper Natural Convection in Enclosures at the 1978 International Heat Transfer Conference and the paper Wavenumber Selection in the 1988 Journal of Heat Transfer Special Bicentennial Issue, have become classic and have been extensively cited. Similarly, his other papers, edited conference proceedings, and review articles on convection in porous media, two-phase flow, natural convection, cooling of electronic devices and nuclear plant safety and design have become landmarks in these areas. He stands out as one of the dominant figures in the field, with a long list of outstanding successful graduate students who have made their mark in academia and industry. His work has influenced researchers in many areas in thermal sciences and has thus provided outstanding leadership to generations of researchers, educators, and engineers in heat transfer. | |