Sabri Ergun (1 March 1918 – 18 February 2006) was a

Turkish Turkish may refer to: *a Turkic language spoken by the Turks * of or about Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities ...

chemical engineer In the field of engineering, a chemical engineer is a professional, equipped with the knowledge of chemical engineering, who works principally in the chemical industry to convert basic raw materials into a variety of products and deals with the ...

. He is known for the

Ergun equation The Ergun equation, derived by the Turkish chemical engineer Sabri Ergun in 1952, expresses the friction factor in a packed column as a function of the modified Reynolds number. Equation f_p = \frac +1.75 where f_p and Gr_p are defined as f ...

, which expresses the pressure drop across a

packed bed In chemical processing, a packed bed is a hollow tube, pipe, or other vessel that is filled with a packing material. The packing can be randomly filled with small objects like Raschig rings or else it can be a specifically designed structure ...

Biography

Sabri Ergun was born on 1 March 1918 in

Gerede Gerede is a town and a district of Bolu Province in the Black Sea region of Turkey. It is located on the highway from Istanbul to Ankara (approximately from Ankara, where the road to the Black Sea coast branches off). It covers an area of , and ...

in the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

(now

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

).Sabri Ergun obituary
on legacy.com, originally from the San Francisco Chronicle, 22 February 2006. He moved to the United States in 1943. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemical engineering from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...

and a D.Sc. degree from the

Vienna University of Technology TU Wien (TUW; german: Technische Universität Wien; still known in English as the Vienna University of Technology from 1975–2014) is one of the major universities in Vienna, Austria. The university finds high international and domestic recogn ...

in 1956. He was married to Dorothy Karns in 1948, and they had three children: David, Robert and James. Ergun served as a staff member of the Coal Research Laboratory at the

Carnegie Institute of Technology Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

and was employed by the U.S. Bureau of Mines as project coordinator of Solid State physics. In 1969, he accepted an invitation to serve as a visiting professor at the

University of Karlsruhe The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; german: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie) is a public research university in Karlsruhe, Germany. The institute is a national research center of the Helmholtz Association. KIT was created in 2009 ...

in Germany. For four years, Ergun worked at

Bechtel Bechtel Corporation () is an American engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company founded in San Francisco, California, and headquartered in Reston, Virginia. , the '' Engineering News-Record'' ranked Bechtel as ...

Corporation as consultant in the field of Waste-to-Oil process development. In 1977, Ergun joined the

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, the United States Department of Energy. Located in ...

of the University of California where he was responsible for research programs on the production of synthetic fuels from coals and biomass until he retired in 1980. He died in 2006 in

Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the county seat of Dane County, Wisconsin, Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin b ...

, where he had lived since 1999.

References

1918 births 2006 deaths 20th-century Turkish mathematicians Turkish scientists Turkish chemical engineers Carnegie Mellon University faculty Turkish emigrants to the United States {{turkey-scientist-stub