Farewell to a prime mover in ion exchange
Fred Helfferich (1922-2005)
 Professor Fred Helfferich died peacefully on 11 September 2005 at University Park, Pennsylvania, US, aged 83. Friedrich Georg Helfferich, who was presented the prestigious Ion Exchange Award by SCI for his outstanding work in the field of ion exchange in 1988, was born in Berlin on 1 August 1922, the son of Karl and Johanna Helfferich.
Both his parents had friends in high places; young Helfferich’s godparents were ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II and Paul von Hindenburg, later President of the Republic. Helfferich’s father was a distinguished economist and had been Secretary of Finance and Vice-Chancellor under Kaiser Wilhelm and later in the Weimar Republic. Helfferich served in the German army during the Second World War, ending his military career as an officer in the 26th Panzer Division.
After the war, Helfferich started his long and distinguished scientific career and first studied with Professor R Schlögl at the University of Hamburg, where he gained a chemistry diploma for work on ion exchange membranes in 1952. He later studied for a further three years at the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry and wrote a doctoral thesis on abnormal potentials in ion exchange membranes for which he was awarded a Dr rer nat (doctor rerum naturalium – Doctor of Science) by the University of Göttingen in 1955.
Helfferich emigrated to the US in 1956, first as a postdoctoral fellow at the Linus Pauling Institute and then as an employee at Shell Development in Emeryville, California, and Houston, Texas, as a researcher in the field of oil exploration and petroleum engineering. It is remarkable that he drafted his seminal book on ion exchange entitled Ionenaustauscher in his early 30s, and it was published in German by Verlag Chemie in 1958. He subsequently translated the entire book himself, so that it could be published by McGraw Hill in 1962 under its English title Ion exchange (above). His book has stood the test of time, it has been reprinted in paperback form and is still used today by students and practitioners. He also co-authored the renowned treatise entitled Multicomponent chromatography: theory of interference with Gerhard Klein in 1970. Experimentalists and theoreticians from diverse fields continue to use the underlying theories developed in this text.
Helfferich was appointed Professor of Chemical Engineering at Pennsylvania State University in 1980. He taught countless students, advised his peers, collected many prizes and accolades, and lived quietly at Penn State until his death.
He was recognised by the American Chemical Society Award in Separation Science and Technology for his seminal work in ion exchange kinetics and ligand exchange. His abounding energy, enthusiasm, scholarship, teaching and good humour will be greatly missed by the ion exchange community worldwide.
by Michael Streat, Loughborough University, UK and
Arup Sengupta, Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, USA
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