Dr. Howard Frederick Rase

Assistant Professor 1952 - 1955

Associate Professor 1955 - 1961

Graduate Advisor 1958 - 1959

Professor 1961 - 1996

Chairman 1963 - 1968

The WA Cunningham Professor of Engineering 1974 - 1996

Howard F. Rase was born on October 18, 1921, in Buffalo, New York, the fourth son of Henry and Sophie Braun Rase. His father was Supervisor of Du Pont's first rayon plant and Howard was named for Howard White, who was plant manager.

The Rase family moved to Pleasanton, New Jersey, then to Chicago, Illinois, and finally, in 1927, to San Antonio, Texas, where Howard graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1938. He selected Chemical Engineering as a major at The University of Texas and received a BS degree in 1942. He then joined Dow Chemical Company in Freeport, Texas and was assigned to a technical service group in Dow's Chemical Engineering Department.

In 1944, he joined Eastern States Petroleum Company in Houston as a process Engineer and then moved to Foster Wheeler Corporation in New York. He served as a Process Engineer and later a Project Engineer on many major design and construction projects for chemical and refining industry during and after World War II.

He left Foster Wheeler in 1949 to attend graduate school at The University of Wisconsin and received an MS degree nine months later in 1950. While working summers for Foster Wheeler, he continued to work toward his Ph.D. degree, which he was awarded May of 1952. Rase joined The University of Texas Chemical Engineering Department faculty and rose to the W.A. Cunningham Professorship, after having served as a Graduate Adisor and Department Chairman. In Spring of 1957, he was Fulbright Professor at the Technical University of Denmark and introduced a modern Chemical Engineering curriculum.

Rase has devoted his University career to innovations in teaching and research and to writing books specifically planned to aid practicing professionals. He received teaching awards from The University (Golden Key and Advisor Awards), the Graduate School (Outstanding Teacher), the College (General Dynamics) and the Department of Chemical Engineering.

Rase organized the Engineering Honors Program, the Engineering Honors/Plan II Liberal-Arts Honors Dual Degree Program and the Chemical Engineering Tutorial Program. His teaching innovations, graduate and under-graduate, were an effort to improve the professional content of the curriculum.

Innovations from his research include rapid screening methods for catalysts, one of the earliest automated microreactor systems, evaluation of the role of dislocations in catalysis, a series of highly selective catalysts, techniques for inhibiting deactivation caused by sintering, first visual demonstration of preferential growth of polyethylene on defects of titanium trichloride, development of insolubized glucoamylase system, and early measurements of catalyst surface temperatures using infrared radiometric techniques of detoxifying pesticide residuals.

Dr. Rase wrote ten books and numerous articles. For most of his professional career, he consulted regularly for the Exxon Company, both in Baytown, Texas, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

In the late 1970s, he petitioned The University of Texas Board of Regents to build a new Chemical Engineering Building and in the early 1980s he acted as chairman of the construction of the building, working with The University of Texas Architect, Lex Acker.

In 1954, he married Beverly Wills Bonelli of Fort Worth. Their daughter Victoria was born in 1961 and their son Howard was born in 1965. Family members include Beverly, Victoria, Victoria's husband Gregory Shinn and their children, Carolyn Shinn Armbruster, her husband Barret Armbruster, Kathryn Victoria Shinn, and Howard, Howard's wife Caroline and their son Ty Howard and daughter Eloise.

A private service is to be held at the family's cemetery plot in Fort Worth. The family asks that, instead of flowers, gifts be sent to the Howard F. Rase Memorial Fund, for the benefit of children at Kirby Hall School, 306 West 29th Street, Austin, Texas, 78705.

Arrangements under the direction of Cook-Walden Funeral Home, Austin, Texas.