Michael R. Moldover Receives Yeram S. Touloukian Award From ASME

NEW YORK, June 26, 2012 – Michael R. Moldover, Ph.D., a resident of Bethesda, Md., and NIST Fellow and leader of the Fluid Metrology Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Gaithersburg, Md.), was honored by ASME.  He was recognized for outstanding contributions as an experimentalist who, over the last 35 years, has had a tremendous fundamental impact in both the equilibrium and transport areas of the thermophysical properties field.  He received the Society’s Yeram S. Touloukian Award.

The triennial award, initially bestowed in 2000, recognizes outstanding technical contributions in the field of thermophysical properties.  It was presented to Dr. Moldover during the Symposium on Thermophysical Properties, which was held in Boulder, Colo., June 24 through 29.

Since he was a graduate student, Moldover has been measuring the thermophysical properties of fluids, at first to solve scientific and engineering problems and later to improve standards of temperature, pressure and flow.

He was an assistant professor of physics at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, before joining the National Bureau of Standards (Gaithersburg, Md.) in 1972; this federal technology agency was renamed the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 1988.  Moldover has been a NIST Fellow since 1995 and has been leader of the Fluid Metrology Group, now in the Sensor Science Division, since 2004.

Moldover and his collaborators invented quasi-spherical cavity resonators for gas metrology.  They used resonators to make the best-in-the-world measurements of the Boltzmann constant and the thermodynamic temperature from 7 K to 550 K.  For fluids near critical points, he characterized the singularities of the heat capacity, equation of state, speed of sound, surface tension, viscosity and bulk viscosity.  These challenging measurements led him to devise novel optical and acoustic techniques and also to conduct measurements in the microgravity environment on the Space Shuttle.  Moldover demonstrated the ubiquity of critical-point wetting.  He recognized that the results of quantum mechanical calculations of the thermophysical properties of helium would become accurate enough to calibrate instruments such as viscometers and pressure gauges.

Under his leadership, NIST’s Fluid Metrology Group measured the properties of replacements for ozone-layer-damaging refrigerants and the properties of reactive gases used in semiconductor processing.  Now, the group is studying nozzles to improve flow standards, measuring the CO2 in flue gases emitted by coal-burning power plants, and developing methods to measure rapidly changing fluid flows.  The NIST group also participates on ASME committees, writing standards for the measurement of flow in conduits and for critical flow venturis. 

He has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed papers.  His co-authored paper titled High-Definition Flow was published in the August 2009 issue of Mechanical Engineering.

His honors include the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bronze (1980), Silver (1982), Gold (1987) and Silver (2011) medals; NIST’s Samuel Wesley Stratton Award for Research Excellence (1988) and Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory  Technical Achievement Award (2005); and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s Presidential Rank Award (2009).

Moldover received his bachelor’s degree in physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, N.Y.) in 1961.  He earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. in physics at Stanford University, California, in 1962 and 1966, respectively.

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