John Howell to Receive ASME Honorary Membership

NEW YORK, August 22, 2013 — John Howell, Ph.D., P.E., a resident of Austin, Texas, and Ernest Cockrell Jr. memorial chair emeritus at The University of Texas at Austin, will be honored by ASME. He is being recognized for continuous support of the engineering profession through service to ASME and other societies; and for ongoing contributions to research in heat transfer and to engineering education through technical publications and textbooks. He will receive Honorary Membership in ASME.

First awarded in 1880, the founding year of the Society, Honorary Membership recognizes a lifetime of service to engineering or related fields. The award will be conferred on Dr. Howell during ASME's annual Honors Assembly held in conjunction with 2013 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, Nov. 15 through 21, in San Diego.

Howell is among the world's pre-eminent scholars in the field of radiation heat transfer. He has a long and distinguished record of contributions as a researcher, administrator, teacher and author, and through tireless service in the engineering community.

Howell began his career with the NASA Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center in Cleveland in 1961. As an engineer in the analytical section of the Heat Transfer Branch, he carried out fundamental research, mainly in low-g boiling and radiation heat transfer in advanced propulsion systems. He decided to go into academics as the lunar program wound down and joined the faculty at the University of Houston (UH) in 1968. While at UH he was a consultant for the NASA Johnson Space Center.

In 1978 Howell moved to the University of Texas at Austin, where he held positions including mechanical engineering department chair (1982-90); and director of the Center for Energy Studies (1988-91), associate dean for research (1996-99) and director of the Advanced Manufacturing Center (2004-06) in the College of Engineering. Since 2010 Howell is Ernest Cockrell Jr. memorial chair emeritus in the department of mechanical engineering. Although retired, he has continued his research with graduate students and is preparing a new (sixth) edition of the text Thermal Radiation Heat Transfer. He also self-published three books on the history of technology.

Howell was project manager for the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Thermal Transport and Thermal Processing Program from 1994 to 1995.

He is author/co-author of approximately 125 archival journals publications and nearly 150 conference papers. He holds seven patents.

An ASME Fellow, Howell served on the Board on Engineering Education in positions including chair of the Ad Hoc Subcommittee to review materials for recruiting students into engineering (1989-90), member of the Intercouncil Committee on Federal Research and Development (1989-92) and adjunct member of the Board on Governmental Relations (1998-2000). He also chaired the Task Force to Review the NSF Budget (1990-92) and testified before the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee. For the Heat Transfer Division (HTD), Howell served on a number of committees and task forces including the K-6 Committee on Heat Transfer in Energy Systems (1976-87; chair 1979-82) and K-11 Committee on Fire and Combustion Systems (1980-82). He served on the Task Force on Thermal Engineering (1991-93) and the Hydrogen Energy Advisory Committee (1989), and he was technical editor of the Journal of Heat Transfer (1995-2000). He received the Heat Transfer Memorial Award in 1991 and the ASME/ American Institute of Chemical Engineers' Max Jacob Memorial Award in 1998. In 2002 a Symposium on Radiation Heat Transfer was held in honor of Howell's 65th birthday during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)/ASME Thermophysics and Heat Transfer Conference.

His honors include NASA's Special Service Award (1965), the American Society for Engineering Education's Ralph Coats Roe Award (1987), AIAA's Thermophysics Award (1990) and the Poynting Award (2013) from the Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer. In 2004 the International Centre for Heat and Mass Transfer dedicated its Fourth International Symposium on Radiative Transfer to Howell and Drs. Kurosaki (Japan) and Sacadura (France).

Howell earned three degrees from Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University), Cleveland: his bachelor's and master's degrees in chemical engineering in 1958 and 1960, respectively; and his Ph.D. in engineering in 1962. He is a registered professional engineer in Texas.

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