In Memoriam: Douglass J. Wilde

Abstract

Douglass J. Wilde, Professor of Engineering Design at Stanford University, was known to many of us for his scientific and engineering contributions and for his simple and caring attitude toward everyone who encountered him—“Doug” to us all. Doug's apparent simplicity hid a complexity of which we get a glimpse from the quotes he used in introducing each chapter in his many books, like the one above by H. W. Longfellow in his first book Optimum Seeking Methods (1964).Doug was born in Chicago, August 1, 1929 and was educated at Carnegie Institute of Technology (“Carnegie Tech” before it became Carnegie Mellon University) earning a BS in Chemical Engineering (1948); at the University of Washington earning an MS in Chemical Engineering (1956) with a thesis on Aggregate Fluidization of Solids by a Liquid; and at the University of California-Berkeley earning a PhD in Chemical Engineering (1960) with a dissertation on Central Control of Processing Systems and Andreas Acrivos as his research advisor. Between his studies, he worked as an engineer at the Pittsburgh Coke and Chemical Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the Union Oil Company of California in Rodeo, California. He started his academic career as an instructor and an assistant professor at UC-Berkeley's Chemical Engineering followed by a year as a Fulbright Exchange Professor at École Nationale Supérieure des Industries Chimiques, Nancy, France. After short stints at the University of Texas Chemical Engineering and Yale University Electrical Engineering, he joined Stanford University in 1963 as an associate professor in Chemical Engineering becoming a full professor in 1973. That same year he left Chemical Engineering and joined the Design Division in the Department of Mechanical Engineering with the unique title of Professor of Engineering Design, where he remained until his retirement.