Llewellyn Michael Kraus Boelter (August 7, 1898 – July 27, 1966) was an American

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...

, Professor of

Mechanical Engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, an ...

at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...

, and founding Dean of its

UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science The UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, informally known as UCLA Samueli School of Engineering or UCLA Engineering, is the school of engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). It opened as the Colle ...

.George J. Maslach, Stafford L. Warren & Joseph W. McCutchan.
Llewellyn Michael Kraus Boelter, Engineering: Berkeley and Los Angeles
in: ''1968, University of California: In Memoriam,'' University of California (System) Academic Senate. May 1968. p. 18-21 In the late 1920s Boelter came into prominence for by his work in the field

heat transfer Heat transfer is a discipline of thermal engineering that concerns the generation, use, conversion, and exchange of thermal energy (heat) between physical systems. Heat transfer is classified into various mechanisms, such as thermal conduction, ...

, for which he had investigated heat transfer in the automobile radiator of the tubular type. F. W. Dittus and Boelter proposed "a convective heat transfer correlation for turbulent flows," which became known as the

Dittus-Boelter equation In thermal fluid dynamics, the Nusselt number (, after Wilhelm Nusselt) is the ratio of convective to conductive heat transfer at a boundary in a fluid. Convection includes both advection (fluid motion) and diffusion (conduction). The conducti ...

. In 1957 he was awarded the

ASME Medal The ASME Medal, created in 1920, is the highest award bestowed by the ASME (founded as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers) Board of Governors for "eminently distinguished engineering achievement". The award has been presented every year ...

Biography

Youth and education

Boelter was born

Winona, Minnesota Winona is a city in and the county seat of Winona County, Minnesota, Winona County, in the U.S. state, state of Minnesota. Located in bluff country on the Mississippi River, its most noticeable physical landmark is Sugar Loaf (Winona, Minnesota ...

in 1898, son of John Julius Boelter and Clara Carolina (Kraus) Boelter.Robert Cecil Cook. ''Who's who in American Education.'' Volume 14. 1950. p. 122 His ancestors had "endured the ravages of Indian attacks and had served in the battles of the Civil War," which triggered an early and lasting interest in American history. After regular education in the states of Minnesota and Washington, Boelter obtained his BSc in 1917 at the College of Mechanics of the University of California, Berkeley, now

UC Berkeley College of Engineering The University of California, Berkeley College of Engineering, branded as Berkeley Engineering, is the engineering wing of the University of California, Berkeley, a public research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1931, the ...

, and his MSc in Electrical Engineering in 1918. In 1917 he had been awarded a John W. Mackay, Jr., Fellowship in Electrical Engineering to make this happen.

Career and acknowledgement

In 1919 Boelter started his academic career at the University of California, Berkeley as instructor in electrical engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. In 1923 he became assistant professor of experimental engineering, in 1927 to associate professor of mechanical engineering, and in 1934 he was appointed full professor. In 1943 Boelter served as associate dean of engineering at Berkeley, and in 1944 became founding dean of its college of engineering, the

. He retired in 1965. Boelter was awarded the Lamme Award by the

American Society for Engineering Education The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) is a non-profit member association, founded in 1893, dedicated to promoting and improving engineering and engineering technology education. The purpose of ASEE is the advancement of education ...

(ASEE), the

by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in 1957, and the

Max Jakob Memorial Award The Max Jakob Memorial Award recognizes an 'eminent scholarly achievement and distinguished leadership' in the field of heat transfer. Awarded annually to a scholar by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the American Institute ...

by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AICC) and the ASME. Purdue University awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Engineering.

Selected publications

* Boelter, Llewellyn Michael Kraus, G. Young, and H. W. Iversen.
An investigation of aircraft heaters. University of California
'' Department of Engineering, 1946. * Boelter, L. M. K., G. Young, and H. W. Iversen.
An Investigation of Aircraft Heaters XXVII: Distribution of Heat-transfer Rate in the Entrance Section of a Circular Tube
'' NACA Technical Note No. 1451, 1948. * Boelter, Llewellyn Michael Kraus. ''Heat transfer notes.'' Univ of California Press, 1948. * Seifert, Howard S., and Llewellyn Michael Kraus Boelter, eds. ''Space Technology.'' Vol. 1. Wiley, 1959. ;Articles, a selection * F.W. Dittus, L.M.K. Boelter. "Heat transfer in automobile radiator Radiator of the tubular type," ''University of California at Berkeley Publ. Eng.'', 2 (1930), pp. 443–461 * Martinelli, R. C., Boelter, L. M. K., Weinberg, E. B., & Yakahi, S. (1943). "Heat transfer to a fluid flowing periodically at low frequencies in a vertical tube." ''Trans. Asme,'' 65(7), 789-798. * Boelter, L. M. K., HSj Gordon, and J. R. Griffin. "Free evaporation into air of water from a free horizontal quiet surface." ''Industrial & Engineering Chemistry'' 38.6 (1946): 596-600.

References

External links

Llewellyn Boelter collection, ca. 1971
Purdue University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections
UCLA Engineering Deans
engineering.ucla.edu (with picture) {{DEFAULTSORT:Boelter, Llewellyn Michael Kraus 1898 births 1966 deaths American mechanical engineers UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni UC Berkeley College of Engineering faculty UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science faculty People from Winona, Minnesota ASME Medal recipients 20th-century American engineers