Aerosol Science and Technology, 41:895–897, 2007

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Copyright
c American Association for Aerosol Research

ISSN: 0278-6826 print / 1521-7388 online
DOI: 10.1080/02786820701604735

The Aerosol Community Mourns the Loss of a Giant

Sheldon K. Friedlander 1927–2007

Cliff I. Davidson,1 Daniel P. Y. Chang,2 Adam Dalis,3 Sheryl H. Ehrman,4

Steven L. Heisler,5 George M. Hidy,6 Anshuman A. Lall,7 Thomas Lesniewski,8
Peter H. McMurry,9 Sotiris E. Pratsinis,10 Daryl L. Roberts,11 Paul T. Roberts,12
Weizhi Rong,13 Patrick Sislian,14 Chandra Venkataraman,15 Chiu-Sen Wang,16
Robert S. Windeler,17 and Cheng Xiong18
1
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Engineering & Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
2
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of California—Davis, Davis,
California, USA
3
Intel Corporation, Portland Technology Department, Hillsboro, Oregon, USA
4
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park,
Maryland, USA
5
ENSR Corporation, Camarillo, California, USA
6
Envair/Aerochem, Placitas, New Mexico, USA
7
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA
8
Northrup Grumman Corporation, San Diego, California, USA
9
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
10
Particle Technology Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland
11
MSP Corporation, Shoreview, Minnesota, USA
12
Sonoma Technology, Inc., Petaluma, California, USA
13
UCLA BH5531, Los Angeles, California, USA
14
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California—Los Angeles, Los
Angeles, California, USA
15
Department of Chemical Engineering, India Institute of Technology—Bombay, Powai, Mumbai, India
16
124 Idaho Avenue, Unit 304, Santa Monica, CA, USA
17
OFS Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA
18
Intel Corporation, DC1 Lithography, RA2, Hillsboro, Oregon, USA

On February 9, 2007, the aerosol community lost one of its
most respected members. Sheldon K. Friedlander died at age
79 of complications from pulmonary fibrosis at his home in
Pacific Palisades. He was the Parsons Professor of Chem-
ical Engineering at University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA).
Sheldon’s remarkable career, which spanned six decades, be-
gan with a B.S. from Columbia University and a Masters degree
from MIT, both in Chemical Engineering. He also worked at the
Harvard School of Public Health on an Atomic Energy Commis-
sion project regarding control of radioactive aerosols. His time
at Harvard catalyzed an interest in aerosols, which he pursued
through subsequent Ph.D. research in Chemical Engineering at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He then served
as a faculty member at Columbia University (1954–1957), John
Hopkins University (1957–1964), California Institute of Tech-
nology (1964–1978), and UCLA (1978–2007).
Sheldon started his Ph.D. studies at a time when the field of
aerosol science was in its early stages of development. Working
with H.F. Johnstone, he focused on how particles in turbulent
airflow are deposited on the walls of pipes and ducts. Sheldon
made important contributions right from the start: he introduced
the notion of a “stopping distance” of a particle injected into
stagnant air, and then used this concept to predict particle mo-
tion through the viscous boundary layer to the surface. His thesis
work laid the foundation for much of the later work on deposi-
tion of particles in industrial systems as well as dry deposition
from the ambient atmosphere, where turbulent eddies impart ve-
locities normal to the mean flow and enable particles to reach
the surface.

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Sheldon K Friedlander
As a natural extension of this early work, Sheldon then con-
sidered the transport of particles to collectors of various ge-
ometries, such as cylindrical fibers and spheres. He developed
expressions for the deposition of particles of different sizes to
these obstacles which became valuable for predicting the effi-
ciencies of fiber filters and collection of airborne particles by
cloud droplets.
His work also involved studies of aerosol dynamics in the
human respiratory system, including transport through the upper
airways down into the lung. These studies informed research by
others on both detrimental and therapeutic aspects of aerosols.
For example, his early work on aerosol deposition in the lung
led to the later development by others of methods to deliver
therapeutic drugs directly to the lung.
But Sheldon went far beyond investigations of particle depo-
sition. In what is often acclaimed as one of his most valuable
scientific contributions, he theorized that regardless of the initial
size distribution, a collection of particles in certain size ranges
tends to grow, coagulate, and settle as it ages to form a “self-
preserving” size distribution. In other words, the distribution of
well-aged particles tends toward a predictable spectrum when
expressed in dimensionless form regardless of the initial condi-
tions. The theory of the self-preserving size distribution is based
on selected solutions to the General Dynamic Equation (GDE),
essentially a mass balance for aerosols that incorporates ma-
jor mechanisms affecting aerosol formation, growth, transport,
and ultimately loss. Since its development, many researchers
have used the self-preserving distribution for such applications
as the design of controlled aerosol reactor experiments and
industrial-scale manufacturing of chemical commodities. The
theory greatly simplifies analysis of the motion and transforma-
tions of particle clouds, since it is no longer necessary to account
for the initial distribution. The theory also permits back-of-the-
envelope calculations of concentrations and size distributions,
thus avoiding the need for numerical solutions to the GDE.
By the early 1970s, the Clean Air Act established by the newly
founded Environmental Protection Agency had focused atten-
tion on identifying the sources of particles in the ambient atmo-
sphere. Once again, Sheldon made pioneering contributions to
the field. He reasoned that different categories of particle sources
such as coal-fired power plants, automobiles, and soil resuspen-
sion have different characteristic chemical compositions. The
atmospheric aerosol includes mixtures of particles from these
and other sources. By measuring the composition of ambient
particles and knowing the composition of particles emitted from
different sources, it was thus possible to estimate the relative con-
tribution of each source type influencing the measurement site.
This “chemical element balance” was the forerunner of Source-
Receptor Modeling that has become a major subdiscipline in
its own right. The numerous software packages commercially
available to conduct this type of modeling demonstrate the power
and importance of the method.
When equipment became available to measure number con-
centrations of very small particles, Sheldon began to study yet
another topic within aerosol science: the formation and growth
of particles from molecular clusters. Using large Teflon bags on
the laboratory roof at Caltech, he and his students studied the
oxidation of SO2 to form sulfate aerosol. He identified two dif-
ferent regimes of oxidation: a low humidity process which forms
very small particles without photochemistry, and a high humid-
ity mechanism in which SO2 is absorbed into existing particles
and oxidized in the presence of liquid water. This work was fol-
lowed by major studies around the world on the formation of
atmospheric aerosol from precursor gases.
Sheldon was a strong believer in the collection of ambient
data as a means of understanding aerosols. In this vein, he was
co-Principal Investigator of one of the first major urban field
campaigns, the California Aerosol Characterization Experiment
(ACHEX) in the early 1970s. Many noteworthy accomplish-
ments came out of ACHEX. As one example, Sheldon and
his group assembled an inventory of carbon emissions in Los
Angeles and used it to apportion sources for the measured car-
bon aerosol; this resulted in the first carbon balance for an urban
airshed. His group also compared particle size distributions mea-
sured during ACHEX across the Basin to demonstrate aerosol
growth by photochemistry. This work promoted widespread in-
terest in elemental and organic carbon during the 1990s, which
included chemical speciation of organic compounds in aerosols.
Later in his career, Sheldon devoted considerable attention
to the creation of synthetic aerosols. He explored the poten-
tial of aerosols to make useful products, and looked into the
 SHELDON K. FRIEDLANDER, 1927–2007
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development of aerosol reactors to generate particles with care-
fully controlled characteristics. Sheldon also studied the proper-
ties of nanoparticles, and postulated a revolutionary relationship
on how agglomerates sinter to become compact particles. His
work greatly simplified the description of non-spherical parti-
cle dynamics at high temperatures, placing the design and safe
operation of aerosol reactors on a firm scientific basis. Sheldon
also discovered the elastic, rubber-like behavior of micrometer-
long chains of ceramic nanoparticles 10 nm in diameter. Such
characteristics of nanoparticles can affect their useful properties
and also their impacts on human health.
These examples are but a small sample of Sheldon’s original
scientific contributions during his productive career. He pub-
lished many seminal archival papers. In addition, he wrote the
influential book Smoke, Dust, and Haze, which was published
in 1977 by John Wiley and Sons and later published in a modi-
fied second edition in 2000 by the Oxford University Press. This
book is widely used by aerosol scientists and educators around
the world.
Although his technical contributions have had a major ef-
fect on the field of aerosol science, perhaps his most significant
accomplishment was training and inspiring others. His brilliant
insights motivated those working with him, and his fascination
with aerosols was contagious. He supervised numerous Ph.D.
students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting scientists during his
career, as well as a large number of undergraduates and MS stu-
dents. He also worked with several dozen aerosol scientists at
his own and other institutions.
Sheldon’s vision went beyond the training of other individ-
uals to continue research in the field. He recognized the impor-
tance of establishing a community that could not only advance
the understanding of aerosol science but also provide credibility
for advocates of the discipline to be of service to society. He
envisioned a world where aerosol scientists offered their exper-
tise to solve a myriad of problems and improve people’s lives in
many ways.
With this vision in mind, Sheldon was one of the original
founders of the American Association for Aerosol Research
(AAAR). From its humble beginning as a small group in Santa
Monica in 1982, the Association has grown to nearly 1000 mem-
bers. Along with the European Aerosol Association, the AAAR
has become a flagship of a network of aerosol associations world-
wide. Sheldon served as President of AAAR during 1984–1986,
and remained active in the association until the time of his death.
Sheldon also believed in the importance of linking science
to public policy. He served on the advisory committee to the
National Institutes of Health that shaped the first agenda for the
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in 1969.
He also served as the first chair of the EPA Clean Air Science
897
Advisory Committee in 1978–1982, and was a member of the
EPA Science Advisory Board Executive Committee during this
period. He was chair of the National Research Council (NRC)
Panel on Abatement of Particulate Emissions from Stationary
Sources, and chair of the NRC Subcommittee on Photochemical
Oxidants and Ozone. In addition, he spent time at other Univer-
sities; for example, he was a Fulbright Scholar in 1960 and a
Guggenheim Fellow in 1969, both at the University of Paris.
As a result of his contributions and leadership in aerosol sci-
ence, Sheldon received many honors throughout his career. For
example, he received five awards from the American Institute
of Chemical Engineers: the Colburn Award in 1959, the Alpha
Chi Sigma Award in 1974, the Walker Award in 1979, the Ce-
cil Award in 1995, and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the
AIChE Particle Technology Forum in 2001. He also received the
Humboldt Senior Scientist Award from the West German Gov-
ernment in 1984–1985. He presented several invited lectures
around the world, and more recently he was the first recipient of
the Christian Junge Award of the European Aerosol Association
in 2000 and the Aurel Stodola Medal of ETH in Zurich in 2004.
Two more awards, however, deserve special comment. Shel-
don was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in
1975, “in recognition of his contributions to the understand-
ing of the origin and control of pollution by particulate mat-
ter.” In addition, Sheldon was the first individual to receive the
Fuchs Memorial Award in 1990, which is the highest honor
that can be bestowed on an aerosol scientist, presented by
the AAAR, Gesellschaft für Aerosolforschung, and the Japan
Association for Aerosol Science and Technology. The Fuchs
Award is presented only once every four years. In the mid-
1990s, the AAAR recognized Sheldon’s impact in the field by
creating the Sheldon K. Friedlander Award for an outstanding
Ph.D. dissertation “in any discipline in the physical, biomed-
ical, or engineering sciences in a field of aerosol science and
technology.”
The world community of aerosol researchers is indebted to
Sheldon Friedlander, outstanding researcher, educator, mentor,
and role model who was one of the giants in aerosol science.
His contributions to the field will be long remembered, and his
wisdom will remain with us in his scientific papers. Most im-
portant, his inspiration will continue through his many students
and colleagues, as we attempt to emulate the character of a great
scientist and a great human being.
Sheldon Friedlander’s doctoral students were invited to con-
tribute to this obituary and be co-authors, and those who were
successfully contacted and who accepted this invitation are in-
cluded in the author list. Many other individuals consider Shel-
don as one of their primary mentors, although their names are
not included as co-authors to keep the list manageable.