ASME President, 1996-1997

Richard J. Goldstein, Ph.D., 1996-97 president of ASME, is Regents' Professor at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Dr. Goldstein has been at the University of Minnesota since 1961, and has served as a visiting professor at St. Johns College, Cambridge University, England; Technion in Haifa, Israel; the Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine in London, England; and the University of Tokyo, Japan.

He began at Minnesota as associate professor in the mechanical engineering department, rising to full professor and then to the Ryan Professorship in 1989, followed in 1990 by the Regents’ Professorship.  He has been Department Head of Mechanical Engineering since 1977.

Earlier, he was an assistant professor (1959-1961) in the engineering department at Brown University, Providence, R.I.  He was a visiting scientist and fellow at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Meudon, France, in 1960-1961. He has held positions with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, Space Technology Labs, Atomics International and NASA Goddard Space Institute.

Dr. Goldstein received his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.  From the University of Minnesota, he holds master of science degrees in mechanical engineering and in physics, and a doctorate in mechanical engineering.

He has been a pioneer in a number of areas in fluid mechanics, heat transfer and the development of experimental methods.  His early work on interferometry paved the way for studies on transient and steady convection in fluids.  He developed a laser interferometer for heat transfer measurement and was a pioneer in laser Doppler velocimetry, developing the reference beam system and making measurements in both laminar and turbulent flows.  His studies on high Raleigh number convection are widely used in a variety of applications in engineering, and in fields from geophysics to astrophysics. He contributed significantly to the development of film cooling systems now used in most high performance gas turbines.  His work on enhanced surface heat transfer includes studies of ribbed surfaces and development of special pin-fin devices.  He has developed a number of mass transfer systems, including computer-controlled data-acquisition instrumentation for sublimation studies in a variety of flows and electrochemical techniques to study natural convection. He has consulted with a number of industries, covering a broad range of activities in fluid mechanics and heat transfer.

In ASME, Dr. Goldstein has served as a member of the Board of Governors and as chair of the Council on Engineering.  He served within the Heat Transfer Division, the Basic Engineering Group, the Distinguished Lecturers Program and the Council on Engineering, including senior vice president of COE. He was named an honorary member of ASME in 1992.

In addition to the ASME, he is a member of the  American Society for Engineering Education, the National Academy of Engineering, the Minnesota Academy of Science, Pi Tau Sigma, Sigma Xi and Tau Beta Pi.  A Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he is also a corresponding member of the National Academy of Engineering of Mexico.

Dr. Goldstein has held a number of other professional appointments, among them: past chair of the National Science Foundation's Engineering Advisory Committee on Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics; chair of the Department of Energy's Council on Energy Engineering Research; past president of the Assembly for Heat Transfer Conferences; and vice president and U.S. delegate  to the International Center for Heat and Mass Transfer.

He is the recipient of many awards, including ASME's Heat Transfer Memorial Award (1978); Golden Key Honorary Member (1988); Max Jakob Memorial Award of the ASME and American Institute of Chemical Engineers (1990); Lykov Medal of the International Centre for Heat and Mass Transfer (1990); the Nusselt-Reynolds Prize of the Assembly of World Conference on Experimental Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics (1993); and an honorary doctorate from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology (1994).

Dr. Goldstein is married and has four¬¬¬ children.  He lives in Golden Valley, Minn.