Prof. Norman Chigier passed away on August 22nd, 2022. Norman has always been an essential part of the Atomization and Sprays Community. He completed his doctor of Science degree at the University of Cambridge, in United Kingdom, in 1977. His first research on sprays was conducted at the International Flame Research Foundation in Ijmuiden, Holland. He was a faculty member of Aeronautical Engineering at the Technion in Haifa, Israel. He worked in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Sheffield, UK, spent a sabbatical year at the NASA Ames Research Center in California, USA, and became Professor at Carnegie-Mellon University, where he founded the Combustion Research Center in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and spent the rest of his career.
During the 2nd ICLASS Conference in Madison, WI, USA in 1982, Norman was encouraged by Prof. Paul Eisenklam to work on establishing an American Section of the Institute for Liquid Atomization and Spray Systems. He assumed the task, and from these initial steps, ILASS-Americas was finally created in 1986. The International Council of ILASS was organized in 1988, and Norman was its second President, from 1992 to 1994, succeeding Prof. Toshio Kurabayashi. His personal involvement in the consolidation and growth of ILASS Intl. was admirable, and he was elected President again for the 2001-2003 term. While his health allowed him, he attended not only all the ICLASS and ILASS-Americas meetings, but also most of the ILASS-Europe and ILASS-Asia Conferences. His vitality and dedication have always been an example for all of us, but especially for young researchers and students coinciding with him in these events.
Norman took also as a personal quest starting in 1991 our journal Atomization and Sprays, which was in some way the continuation of the journal Atomization and Spray Technology (AST) founded in 1985 by Paul Eisenklam and discontinued three years later, after his passing away. Norman was Editor-in-Chief of Atomization and Sprays until 2009. In recognition of this work, ILASS established the Norman Chigier Award given each year to the best Atomization and Sprays reviewer. For over 40 years, he was also the editor of Progress in Energy and Combustion Science. In 1985 he received the Tanasawa Award, and in 2006 he was the first recipient of the Arthur Lefebvre Award.
Those of us that had the fortune to know Norman will always remember his enthusiasm, his love for sports, his passion for a healthy life, and his absolute conviction that Combustion Science and Technology cannot be understood without the contribution of Atomization and Sprays. His decease is a great loss for all of us.
Antonio Lozano
President of ILASS-Europe