Matrices are forever: On applied mathematics and computing in chemical engineering

In the 1960s, Industrial and Engineering Chemistry published a sequence of Fundamentals Reviews (several authored or co-authored by Leon Lapidus) documenting annual progress in mathematics and computers in the field of chemical engineering. These reviews included detailed lists of all publications in the profession that had something to do with applied mathematical and computational techniques and their application to reaction engineering, transport, control and design. Far from such a detailed account, in our tracing of the impact of applied mathematics and computing developments in chemical engineering research through the last 50 years we find two main trends, at very different professional levels. The first is in basic graduate education, where modeling (and the tools to exploit it) forms the basis and the common language of a research/problem solving culture. The second is at the forefront of research, where the time span between mathematical/computational developments and their fruitful adoption, modification and exploitation in chemical engineering is constantly narrowing.