Happy Anniversary, Mr. Shinskey

I'm in the middle of editing a great article, "Multivariable Control of Distillation," by Greg Shinskey. It will appear online and in print soon. As is always the case with articles like this, I have been conducting a considerable email correspondence with Greg, just dotting all the i's and crossing the t's. In the course of this exchange, Greg shared that this year marks the 50th anniversary of his first published paper: "For Gas-phase Reactors: Design for Control of Temperature," which appeared in Chemical Engineering on Oct. 5, 1959.  

1959 was also the year the St. Lawrence Seaway opened Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the union. The Oscar for best picture went to "Ben Hur," the top record (and that's what they were in those days) was "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" by the Platters, and the "Song of the Year" Grammy went to "The Battle of New Orleans." The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Chicago White Sox in the World Series (and, incidentally, broke my heart). The Nobel Prize in chemistry went to Czechoslovakian Jaroslav Heyrovsky for his discovery and development of the polarographic methods of analysis.

A lot of processes have gone in and out of control since then, and all the way, Greg has been adding to the body of work that has advanced the automation industry. Thanks, Greg.