Thursday 11 August 2022

Fernando Concha: 1937-2022


Sad news from Chile of the death of Prof. Fernando Concha, former director of the Center for Water Resources for Agriculture and Mining (CRHIAM) and Professor Emeritus of the University of Concepción.

Prof. Concha served as director of the Center between 2013 and 2018. He began his academic career in the then Department of Extractive Metallurgical Engineering in 1960, two years after obtaining the title of Chemical Civil Engineer from the University of Concepción. In 2016 he was awarded the honorary title of Professor Emeritus, the highest academic recognition of the university.

I met Prof. Concha only once, when he attended Solid-Liquid Separation '02 in Falmouth, and twelve years later he authored a book on Solid-Liquid Separation in the Minerals Industry

Prof. Concha (left) at Solid-Liquid Separation '02 in Falmouth

In 1998 he was awarded the prestigious Antoine Gaudin Award by the SME, for his work on hydrocyclones, and he played a part in the careers of two other Gaudin Award Winners, who I interviewed for MEI, Prof. Janusz Laskowski and Dr. Osvaldo Bascur.

We offer our condolences to Fernando's family, and invite those who knew him to leave your memories on this posting.

4 comments:

  1. Very sad news of the passing of Professor Fernando Concha. I very much enjoyed interacting with him every time we met in conferences around the world. He made great contributions to the field, but he should certainly be remembered for his seminal work in thickening, having built a very elegant and usable model framework, well ahead of his time!
    Every time we met, he always reminded me how much he enjoyed the time he and his family spent in Rio de Janeiro during the 1970s as a visiting faculty at the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering at UFRJ (where I am now a faculty, but well before my time...). Indeed, when I teach my students sedimentation theory I always make a point to let them know that the first two of the classic series of papers "Settling velocities of particulate systems XX" were written by him and his student at the time (Ericksson Almendra, who later became a faculty and a colleague of mine), when he was in our institution.
    Another giant that we loose in the field, leaving the next generation yet another pair of big shoes to fill!
    Our sympathies to his family.

    Luís Marcelo Tavares
    Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering
    Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

    ReplyDelete
  2. I first met Fernando in the early 70s, when we were both visiting professors at COPPE, the post-graduate engineering school at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. We kept in touch over the years, but I haven’t seen him since the early noughties. He was a real gentleman and a fine scholar and is a great loss to our
    profession. Johanna and I send our sincere condolences to his family.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fernando was a great mentor and a very good friend. We collaborated in the understanding of the modeling of suspensions of slurries and the dynamic modeling of thickeners. His dream was to write a book on the Science of Mineral Processing. I had the privilege to collaborate to his dream during the last years of his research. His book will be published as: The Science in Mineral Processing
    A Fundamental Approach. He was a very dedicated professor and researcher that became one the GIANTS of Mineral Processing. His new book is a testimony of his devotion to the profession. I will miss him tremendously. My deepest sympathies to his wife Margarita and his family.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Could you leave your name?

    ReplyDelete

If you have difficulty posting a comment, please email the comment to bwills@min-eng.com and I will submit on your behalf