Sabri Ergun

Sabri Ergun was born on March 1, 1918, in Gerede, Ottoman Empire (now Turkey). He moved to the United States in 1943. He earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemical engineering from Columbia University and a D.Sc. from the Vienna University of Technology in 1956. Ergun was married to Dorothy Karns in 1948 and had three children: David, Robert, and James. His career included roles as a staff member at the Coal Research Laboratory at Carnegie Institute of Technology and as a project coordinator for the U.S. Bureau of Mines. He also served as a visiting professor at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany and worked as a consultant for Bechtel Corporation on Waste-to-Oil process development. In 1977, Ergun joined the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, where he focused on research into synthetic fuel production from coals and biomass until his retirement in 1980. He is best known for the Ergun equation, which is fundamental in understanding fluid flow through packed beds. Sabri Ergun passed away on February 18, 2006, in Madison, Wisconsin, where he had resided since 1999.