Person

Epstein, Norman

1944-2022

Norman Epstein was a long-time faculty member in the UBC Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and one of Canada’s best-known chemical engineers. Born in Montreal in 1923, Epstein earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemical engineering at McGill (1945, 1946), and a doctorate in engineering science from New York University (1953). He started work at UBC in 1951 as an instructor in chemical engineering, and became an assistant professor in 1954. He was promoted to full professor in 1965, and was named professor emeritus upon his retirement in 1988. He continued to publish and present at professional conferences for many years after his “retirement”.
Epstein was a leader in research in the areas of spouted beds, heat exchanger fouling, liquid-solid and three-phase fluidization, and dynamic particulate processes such as sedimentation. The book Spouted Beds, which he co-wrote with Kishan B. Mathur and published in 1974, remains an authoritative text on the subject. Within his department Epstein was respected as a leader who fostered an inclusive departmental and professional community in support of learning and scholarship, as well as both professional and community service. He also taught in UBC’s first-year Arts One programme. He was editor of The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering from 1985 to 1990, and served on many committees and executives for the Chemical Institute of Canada and the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering. For his many professional contributions Epstein was honoured with the Jules Stachiewicz Medal in 1988 and the R.S. Jane Memorial Lecture Award in 1989. Also, when UBC Chemical and Biological Engineering moved into a new building in 2006, the new departmental reading room was named in his honour.
Outside his professional activities Epstein was an active member of the UBC Faculty Association, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, Amnesty International, and Engineers for Nuclear Disarmament. He spoke on various social and political topics, such as socialism, anarchism, anti-Semitism, Arab-Israeli relations, and the Cold War, and corresponded regularly with prominent social critic Noam Chomsky. Epstein died in July 2023, just a few months shy of his 100th birthday.

Professor of Chemical Engineering