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This is the 27th volume of Memorial Tributes compiled by the National Academy of Engineering as a personal remembrance of the lives and outstanding achievements of its members and international members. These volumes are intended to stand as an enduring record of the many contributions of engineers and engineering to the benefit of humankind. In most cases, the authors of the tributes are contemporaries or colleagues who had personal knowledge of the interests and the engineering accomplishments of the deceased. Through its members and international members, the Academy carries ...
This is the 27th volume of Memorial Tributes compiled by the National Academy of Engineering as a personal remembrance of the lives and outstanding achievements of its members and international members. These volumes are intended to stand as an enduring record of the many contributions of engineers and engineering to the benefit of humankind. In most cases, the authors of the tributes are contemporaries or colleagues who had personal knowledge of the interests and the engineering accomplishments of the deceased. Through its members and international members, the Academy carries out the responsibilities for which it was established in 1964.
Under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering was formed as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. Members are elected on the basis of significant contributions to engineering theory and practice and to the literature of engineering or on the basis of demonstrated unusual accomplishments in the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology. The National Academies share a responsibility to advise the federal government on matters of science and technology. The expertise and credibility that the National Academy of Engineering brings to that task stem directly from the abilities, interests, and achievements of our members and international members, our colleagues and friends, whose special gifts we remember in this book.
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BY D. NATHAN MEEHAN
GLEN PAUL WILLHITE, a leading professor of chemical and petroleum engineering at Kansas University and a renowned expert in waterflooding and enhanced recovery, passed away in Lawrence, Kansas, on Dec. 15, 2022, at the age of 85. With more than a half-century of seminal contributions and dedicated service to KU and the engineering industry, Paul is recognized as a remarkable educator and researcher who served the academic community, his university, his state, the nation, and international societies with the utmost distinction.
Paul was born on July 18, 1937, in Waterloo, Iowa, the son of Glen Jessie and Arietta Della (Friedley) Willhite. He graduated from East Waterloo High School in 1955. He married Jewell Fox on May 31, 1959, in West Des Moines, Iowa.
His career in academia is decorated with extensive service to the department, the School of Engineering, higher education, and the petroleum industry. Willhite also helped launch a key initiative to develop a range of improved oil recovery applications that were affordable for independent operators in Kansas and the region. Willhite authored 97 technical papers. He was also the author of the 1986 Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) textbook, Waterflooding, and a co-author of the SPE textbook, Enhanced Oil Recovery (Henry L. Doherty Memorial Fund, 1998). To this day, these textbooks remain foundational to the educational experience of petroleum engineering students at KU and beyond.
Willhite earned a B.S. in chemical engineering from Iowa State in 1959 and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Northwestern in 1962. He joined the faculty at the KU School of Engineering as an associate professor of chemical and petroleum engineering in 1969 and retired in 2019 as Ross H. Forney Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering.
In 1962, Willhite began his career as a research scientist in the production research division with Continental Oil Company in Oklahoma and was promoted to senior research scientist in 1967. He began his 50-year career at KU two years later.
In 1974, Willhite co-founded and co-directed the Tertiary Oil Recovery Project (TORP) with chemical and petroleum engineering professor Don Green. The program was designed to acquaint Kansas producers with the technical and economic potential of enhanced recovery methods for oil and gas fields that were affordable for independent operators in Kansas and throughout the region.
A major thrust of the research program was directed at the problem of high rates of water production due to waterflood-injected water channeling through high-permeability zones in the reservoir and bypassing oil in zones of lesser permeability. Under Willhite’s guidance, TORP investigated injecting polymers and/or gelled polymers into the reservoir to reduce the permeability of these zones. The research contributed significantly to understanding the process and provided information that was important in the design. These polymer systems have been widely used in Kansas, other states, and around the world.
Technologies developed by Willhite’s group at TORP were capable of quickly increasing oil production when the U.S. needed incremental oil as the main source of energy. The project also developed a strong outreach/tech-transfer model that later became an exemplar for other programs across the country.
In addition to his leadership roles in advancing oil and gas production in Kansas and his influence as a renowned textbook author, Willhite has a lengthy and distinguished record of service to the university and the petroleum engineering field. He has chaired scores of conference committees and other events in petroleum engineering at the national level. Of note is his service to the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, where he spent more than 25 years as an evaluator mentoring new programs on how to be accredited and evaluating those already accredited.
In the late 2010s, Willhite also took the initiative of remodeling the petroleum engineering laboratory. He spent months purchasing, designing, and setting up state-of-the-art experiments that help students understand the fundamentals of the physical phenomena that underlie the primary, secondary, and tertiary oil recovery processes. He also spent a vast amount of time improving the methods of writing so students could improve their writing skills.
Willhite was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2006. He received the SPE Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty (1981), SPE Lester C. Uren Award (1986), SPE Distinguished Membership (1987), SPE John Franklin Carll Award (2001), and SPE Honorary Member (2012), an honor given to only 0.1% of the membership. He also received the IOR Pioneer Award at the 2004 SPE/DOE Improved Oil Recovery Symposium. He served on the SPE Education & Accreditation Committee, SPE Improved Oil Recovery Conference, and SPE Improved Oil Recovery Symposium program committees. He served as the chairperson for the SPE Improved Oil Recovery Symposium from 2007-08 and was an associate editor for the SPE Journal. He is a member of the Iowa State University Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering Alumni Hall of Fame. At KU, he won the Excellence in Teaching Award from the KU Center for Teaching Excellence, and at the School of Engineering, he was named both a Bellows Scholar and Miller Scholar and won the Gould Award for Advising. He also received the Distinguished Engineering Service Award, the highest honor bestowed by the KU School of Engineering
He was the Scoutmaster for the Boy Scout troop at the American Legion Home. He also participated in Scouting in Lawrence and received the Silver Beaver Award. Paul was an active member of Centenary United Methodist Church, where he served as a trustee. He was a volunteer tax preparer for senior citizens through AARP. His oral history was recorded on Oct. 26, 2014, in Amsterdam and is preserved by SPE at ethw.org/Oral-History:G._ Paul_Willhite.
Paul is survived by his wife and their children, Elizabeth (Phil) Wilhelm, Mark (Shanna) Willhite, Ben Willhite, Sara (Robert) Lasher, and Rachel Lechtenberg; brother Brian (Janis) Willhite and sister Karen (Dick) Stahlhut; 14 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.