Memoir

Howard W. Emmons

Harvard University

August 30, 1912 - November 20, 1998


Scientific Discipline: Engineering Sciences
Membership Type:
Member (elected 1966)

Howard W. Emmons was considered the father of modern home fire research.  The primary approach to home fire research before Emmons was the development of fire suppression techniques; however, Emmons redirected the approach to focus on combustion, convection of heated gases, by-products of combustion, radiation among the components and to nearby objects, control of air supply, and the chemistry of the reactions involved.  In 1956 he published a paper, “The Film Combustion of Liquid Fuels,” that would become a classic reference in the field of combustion science and is now referred to as simply the Emmons Problem.  His home fire research culminated in the establishment of the Harvard Computer Fire Code, which predicted how fires spread, and in the congressional passing of the Fire Research and Safety Act in 1968.  Emmons’ other major contributions were during World War II when he was working for the Army Ballistic Research Laboratory.  He helped construct one the first large, supersonic wind tunnels as well as one of the first high Mach number compressor blade cascade tunnels.  He was also the first to observe isolated regions of aircraft that had undergone a transition from laminar to turbulent flow.  These regions became known as “Emmons spots,” and they were established as the general mechanism of turbulence transition.

Emmons attended the Stevens Institute of Technology where he received his M.E. degree in 1933 and his M.S. degree two years later.  He then enrolled at Harvard University to earn his S.D. degree in 1938.  He began his career at the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co. in Pennsylvania in 1937, but left to conduct research at the Army Ballistic Research Laboratory when the U.S. entered World War II.  During this time, Emmons was also an assistant professor at Harvard University, becoming an associate professor in 1944, the Gordon McKay Professor of Mechanical Engineering in 1949, and the Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Engineering in 1966.  He held both professorships until 1983 when he became Professor Emeritus.  Along with consulting for countless committees and government organizations, Emmons was a member of the American Association for Advancement of Sciences, the American Physical Society, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the Combustion Institute.  For his contributions to engineering science, he received the Edgerton Gold Medal of the International Combustion Symposium in 1968, the Timoshenko Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1971, and the Man of the Year Award of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers in 1982.

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