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| Home : Volume 32 : Winter 2006 | |
| In memoriam | |
Otto Uyehara |
Back when Otto Uyehara began researching engines, you could buy gasoline for about 20 cents a gallon. In one early “project,” the California teenager cut metal from a Model T Ford to shorten it and added overdrive to its engine. An emeritus professor of mechanical engineering with a distinguished career in engine research, Uyehara died Sept. 6.
In the 1930s, Uyehara came to Wisconsin and worked his way through college. He took two years' worth of UW Extension courses in Milwaukee before enrolling in chemical engineering at UW-Madison for bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees. When he received his PhD in 1946, he became an instructor here; a year later, he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering as an assistant professor. Ten years later he became a full professor and retired in 1982.
During his four-decade career, Uyehara established an international reputation as an engine researcher. He and his colleagues pioneered ways to view the hot gases inside the combustion chamber of a running engine and established principles of combustion. As an instructor, Uyehara taught courses on topics ranging from beginning thermodynamics to graduate-level combustion, and developed courses about energy-conversion devices and experimental instrumentation.
One colleague described Uyehara as “the kindest, most sympathetic, most painstaking man on the faculty.” That colleague nominated him for the College of Engineering's Benjamin Smith Reynolds Award for Teaching Excellence, which Uyehara received in 1967. One of Uyehara's earliest honors, however, came in 1951 from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers for developing a method to measure flame temperature inside an engine. And, in addition to awards he shared with faculty and students in the engine lab, Uyehara also received an award for fuel and engine research from the Society of Automotive Engineers in 1968 and was elected a Fellow of the society in 1978.
SEPTEMBER 2005
Wayne Gritzmacher (BSMetE '65)
Alison Kisch (BSCEE '88)
Robert Peterman (BSME '35)
Robert Smith (BSMineE '49)
Donal Ferrell (BSCEE '50)
Robert Emanuel (BSEE '49)
Elbert Reynolds Jr. (PhDME '57)
Peter Ryan (BSCEE '65)
Reginald Urban (BSME '46)
Noble Sherwood Jr. (MSME '43)
Kevin Hartberg (BSIE '96)
Ralph Evans (BSEE '47)
Robert Lockman (BSEE '51)
Peter Walker Jr. (BSEE '59)
OCTOBER 2005
Philip Curtis (BSME '59)
Karl Sager (BSME '38)
Eugene Tanking (BSEE '49)
James Keating (BSChE '44)
John Losse (BSME '51)
Paul Palmer Jr. (BSEE '70)
Donald Plautz (BSChE '49)
Robert Strehlow (BSCEE '47)
James Cherwinka (BSChE '58)
George Pazik (BSMetE '44)
Alvin Borsuk (BSME '53)
John Kuhta (BSCEE '37)
Hallett Olsen (BSME '58)
Harold Mack (BSEE '61)
Ronald Schenck (BSEE '57)
Karl Klapka (BSMineE '40)
Wesley Taylor (BSME '54)
NOVEMBER 2005
Forrest Gehrke (BSEE '44)
Chester Barrand Jr. (BSChE '48)
Harry Wendt (BSEE ’35, MSEE '37)
Merlin Grundy (BSChE '40)
Erik Lillegard (BSChE '93)
DECEMBER 2005
William Depew (BSEE '43)
David Heim (MSCEE '92)
Robert Wollersheim (BSEE '66, MSEE '67)
Thomas Kenney (BSChE '76)
Robert Rea (BSEE '51)
R. Micheels Angelbeck (BSME '57)
Content by perspective@engr.wisc.edu
Date last modified: 03-Feb-2006
Date created: 03-Feb-2006
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