The Milton Blander symposium on thermodynamic predictions and applications foreword
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MILTON BLANDER
It is a great pleasure and privilege to introduce these Proceedings of the Milton Blander Symposium on Thermodynamic Predictions and Applications, held in honor of Dr. Blander’s 70th birthday. Milt has been an inspiration to generations of scientists. The papers in these Proceedings, authored by a small sample of Milt’s hundreds of colleagues, students and friends, attest to the wide diversity of fields of pure and applied chemistry in which he has played a major role. As graduate students we studied his book “Molten Salt Chemistry” and his papers assiduously. Later, we had the good fortune to meet Milt and eventually to collaborate with him. We have been not only inspired by his insights, but infected by his constant optimism and personal charm. Milton Blander received his B.S. in Chemistry from Brooklyn College, and his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Yale in 1953, writing his dissertation on measurements of the diffusion of ionic materials in water. His work at Cornell University (1953–55) involved very rapid kinetics of gaseous reactions. At the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (1955–62) he initiated a very long term theoretical and experimental study of the thermodynamic properties of molten ionic solutions (molten salts and silicates). The ultimate major results were methods for predicting the properties of multicomponent solutions of molten salts and silicates from data on unary and binary systems. Dr. Blander continued this work at Rockwell International, Thousand Oaks, CA (1962–71) in addition to initiating theoretical and experimental studies of lunar samples and meteorites. He developed a theory for the origins of meteorites and other condensed matter in the solar system as non-equilibrium condensates from a gas of solar composition using well known nucleation constraints as a basis of the theory. He performed experimental studies of stony meteorites which supported the theory. As senior scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory (1971–95) he continued all this work and initiated work on bubble nucleation of liquids and theoretical studies of nucleation kinetics of phase changes in liquids and gases. He worked on experiments on hydrogen bonding of molecules (alcohols, water, organic acids etc.) in vapors using a sensitive and accurate thermal conductivity technique. He also developed a dimensional theory for accurately predicting thermodynamic properties (entropies and Gibbs energy functions) a priori using a simple equation. In addition, he made theoretical contributions in other fields including nuclear fuel processing, submerged arc welding and in 1995–98, he focused on calculations of the combustion chemistry of different types of biomass as substitutes for fossil fuels. Since his “retirement” in 1995, he has worked for his own private consultancy firm, Quest Research, S. Holland IL. Dr. Blander has (co)authored over 250 papers including review articles on molten salts, ionic vapors, bubble nucleation, hydrogen bonding, and welding and edited a book, “Molten Salt Chemistry”, in 1964 w
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