Recollections of My Life

Dimitri Gidaspow was born in Ukraine in 1934. During the German occupation of Ukraine my father worked for the Germans as an agricultural engineer and therefore had to leave with the German troops when they retreated. We traveled through Ukraine in a covered wagon and then by train to Germany. My mother taught me how to read and write in Ukrainian and Russian. In Germany I attended school for 3 years before we emigrated to the U.S. We came to New York City in a military boat. I went to Seward Park high school graduating at the top of my class, graduated from the City College of New York cum laude and received my Master’s degree from the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn.For my PhD in engineering I attended the Illinois Institute of Technology ( IIT ) on the south side of Chicago. After getting my PhD degree with Rex Ellington and co-advisor Ralph Peck I started teaching at IIT and stayed at IIT until my retirement. I had many excellent graduate students who are now working in industries, department of energy and universities across the USA and overseas. Unlike some professors I did not treat my graduate students like slaves but as collaborators. I lectured in Iran, Turkey, Norway, France, Japan, Australia, Thailand, at the Academy of Sciences in China and at the Harbin University in China. I received many professional awards and was elected to be a distinguished professor in November 2000. My 1994 book, Multiphase Flow and Fluidization has about 5,000 citations and rising every year. I published 3 other books with co-authors.