2016 marks the 90th birthday of Prof. Heinrich Schubert, Emeritus Professor of the oldest mining academy in the world, the TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany. Although he is still active, and currently supervising a PhD student, Prof. Schubert officially retired 25 years ago, and in his retirement year chaired the XVII IMPC 1991 in Dresden, Germany. Ten years ago he was the recipient of the IMPC Lifetime Achievement Award at the XXIII IMPC 2006 in Istanbul, Turkey (MEI Online).
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| IMPC Turkey 2016, Profs. Onal, Schubert, Forssberg and O'Connor |
His most lasting contributions, besides his many papers, are the three volume Aufbereitung fester Stoffe, perhaps the most important mineral processing books in the German language and the two volume Handbuch der Mechanischen Verfahrenstechnik, a comprehensive textbook on the basics of Mechanical Process Technologies, which he edited, authored and co-authored. He has made many contributions in different areas of mineral processing, mechanical process engineering and particle technology, aiming to describe process unit operations with fundamental micro processes. As part of such approaches he has been recognised for his work in the unit operations that are governed by multi-phase turbulent flows, such as flotation, where in recent years his flotation hydrodynamics work is widely cited.
His various contributions in these fields have been honoured by a special issue of International Journal of Mineral Processing (Volume 156, November 2016), with Guest Editors Dr. Martin Rudolph, of the Helmhotz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technologies, and Prof. Urs Alexander Peuker, of TU Bergakademie Freiberg. The special issue contains some of the latest research results in Prof. Schubert's areas of interest, by invited authors in these fields.
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| Prof. Schubert with IJMP Guest Editors Prof. Peuker and Dr. Rudolph (Courtesy of Martin Rudolph, HIF/HZDR) |
In reading the Foreword to the special issue I was saddened to hear that two of the invited authors, Prof. Thomas Neeße and Prof. Jürgen Tomas died last year. Although I did not know Jürgen, Thomas, of the University of Erlangen, was a contributor at six MEI Conferences, his last being at Physical Separation '09.
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| Thomas Neesse (right) at Physical Separation '09 with Erlangen colleague Johann Dueck |
Twitter @barrywills
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Professor Schubert, best wishes for your 90th birthday. Gaudeamus igitur.Fathi Habashi
ReplyDeleteDear Barry,
ReplyDeletethanks again for posting these news. For me as a chemical engineer, having been trained in particle technologies and having worked in the field of nanoparticles for a long time, I am very lucky to have the opportunity to work with one of the remaining mineral experts from the glorious Freiberg Mineral processing times. Since I started working in the field of mineral processing and especially flotation science in 2012 I have had the opportunity to regularly meet with Prof. Schubert and learn a lot. Furthermore after having dug deeper into the international processing community I constantly met people who either had stories to tell about encounters with Prof. Schubert or value his contributions in the field. Thus it was a pleasure for initializing this special issue. I am pretty sure there might be the one or other person that will read this blog post and wonders why he/she has not been invited. If so, I would like to apologize as I still have not the full insight into the influential sphere of Prof. Schubert.
I would also like to thank you, Barry, for remembering Prof. Neeße who, when I was a student I was always so thankful for his wonderful, applicable and physical meaningful models of hydrocyclones. It is important to emphasize his link to the Freiberg mineral processing scene (TU Bergakademie Freiberg and FIA Forschungsinstitut für Aufbereitungstechnik) and especially to Prof. Friedrich Liepe (fluid mechanics expert) who helped Prof. Schubert and Prof. Neeße with the turbulence modelling. Prof. Liepe also sadly passed away two years ago. On my way to becoming a Flotation expert there was also another Freiberg influential scientist who would have been perfect to contribute but unfortunately also allready passed away in 2003, Dr. Hans-Joachim Schulze. Hence we were very glad to receive two wonderful contributions by Prof. Anh Nguyen (University of Queensland) who has spent time in Freiberg together with Dr. Schulze.
I would really like to hear more People telling me about their memories with Prof. Schubert and/or the Freiberg Mineral processing Scene. If you have stories to tell, feel free to contact me (the URL to my web Business Card is linked to this comment).
Glück Auf!
Martin Rudolph
Excellent report!!! We used all these fundamentals to build Dynaflote. Prof Schubert spent a couple of months at the U of Utah working on it.
ReplyDeleteWarm Regards
Osvaldo