George Hatsopoulos
| George N. Hatsopoulos | |
|---|---|
George Hatsopoulos, 2011, Chemical Heritage Foundation.
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| Born |
January 7, 1927 Athens, Greece |
| Awards | John Fritz Medal (1996) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mechanical engineering |
| Institutions | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
George Nicholas Hatsopoulos (born January 7, 1927) is a Greek American mechanical engineer noted for his work in thermodynamics and for having co-founded Thermo Electron.
Hatsopoulos was born in Athens, Greece in 1927 and is related to the former rector of the Athens Polytechnic School, Nicolas Kitsikis. He attended Athens Polytechnic before entering MIT, where received his Bachelor and Master of Science (1950), Mechanical Engineer (1954), and Doctorate of Science (1956).
In 1965, he and Joseph Keenan published their textbook Principles of General Thermodynamics, which restates the second law of thermodynamics in terms of the existence of stable equilibrium states. Their formulation of the second law of thermodynamics states that:
The Hatsopoulos-Keenan statement of the Second Law entails the Clausius, Kelvin-Planck, and Carathéodory statements of the Second Law, and has provided a basis to extend the traditional definition of entropy to the non-equilibrium domain.
In 1976, Hatsopoulos also contributed to a formulation of a unified theory of mechanics and thermodynamics, arguably a precursor of the emerging field of quantum thermodynamics.
While at MIT, Hatsopoulos was head of the Engineering Division of Matrad Corporation (New York). Matrad Corporation and MIT financially supported his doctoral thesis, The Thermo-Electron Engine. Matrad corporation was owned by the family of Peter M. Nomikos, a Harvard Business School graduate. In 1956, Nomikos co-founded with Hatsopoulos the Thermo Electron Corporation.Thermo Electron became a major provider of analytical instruments and services for a variety of domains under the development of George Hatsopoulos, John Hatsopoulos, and Arvin Smith. In 1965, George Hatsopoulos was president of the Thermo Electron Engineering Corporation and Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at M.I.T..
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