When we happened to meet God !
Yes!! Its not an exaggeration “calling him the Chemical Engineering God”, this legendary professor of Chemical Engineering for which the department of Wisconsin will always boast. I am talking once again about Prof Biron Bird.
Incidentally, we happened to invite him to a dinner with us. It was Kenji doing this as he wanted to go from Madison after his PhD with this fantastic memory of interacting with Prof Bird once again on ‘dinner table’. We took some pictures as well. Prof Bird gave 4 of us (Kenji, Santosh, Manan and myself ) a ride to Hong Kong café. In the end he dropped us to the department.
He speaks many different languages just for fun and he usually interacts with Chinese people in their language, with dutch people in their language and so on. He was doing the same here. There was a waitress in the restaurant. She was talking in English, but prof. Bird kept talking in Chinese and then she was amazed and impressed !!
She could figure out that we were students and he was a teacher, but she asked what his subject was. I just wanted to say “ Hey ! You are talking with someone who is legendary, who is the biggest professor in Madison, and to talk with him, I had to wait till this moment. He is the so called author of so many books which are the best in their class. If there is a God of Chemical Engineering, here he is!!!!!! If he happens to take the 620 course again, I am sure there will be maximum enrollment in the course.”
But Kenji is funny! He said “He is our Chinese language teacher.” The gal was surprised this time. She could not believe. She started laughing this time.
It was prof Bird who told her in Chinese that he was a prof of Chemical Engineering.
Some of the stories that he told to us yesterday.
Food: Chinese is his favourate food. He did not like the Indian food because it had flavours. L Sad, we wanted him to invite for an Indian Dinner.
Languages: He can speak, read and write as many a 8-9 different languages, most of which he has learnt on his own. He learnt Chinese on his own and then learnt from a teacher while he was in Japan for some time. However he used to teach in English only.
World War: He was fighting in the world war and was using the mortar firing cannons a lot and which took toll on his hearing capability. He was in Germany during the world war.
Book: They printed the first edition of BSL the most famous book in transport- phenomena way back and sent it for reviews to different universities. These reviews were harsh but then after these reviews, these people took real hard pains to correct and improve each and every section to get the second edition. There are a few secrets in the book which I think a few Chemical Engineers know. He wanted to print a dutch saying in the preface but he was not allowed to and then he kept that in the book in a secret hidden way.
Kenji asked him if he had mismatch of concepts, or things like that with the other authors. He said “ So many that he was himself surprised how they talk till date J They took all pains to type everything in word, and then the publishers changed the software to print it leaving so many errors in the book that there is supposedly a person in Puorto Rico who sends him a 20 page review of errata every month or so and Prof Bird still takes all efforts for the improvement.
Work/ office: He comes at 6:30 in the office. To have an idea what it takes to wake up at 6:30, I put my alarm today at 6:30. Sadly, I switched it off and slept again L. He works till around 4:00 and then leaves for home.
Puzzles: He likes to solve very tricky puzzles. One typical which he could not solve since many days was a Japanese puzzle in which there are three rings, which loop into each other and can be separated apart with some really difficult tricks. He could not solve it though. One of my seniors looked up the solution at web but did not tell him. He expressed his disappointment in that “saying why did not he come to me to share the solution ?’
Climate: I myself can’t believe it was such a mild winter this year in Madison which has surprised almost everyone here. Prof Bird told that he has witnessed – 40 deg C in Madison. This wasn’t cold enough and was in fact disappointing for him.
History book: Prof Bird is writing the history of department of Chemical Engineering since many years and a book has been published recently.
He has so many qualities and is such a ‘down to earth’ person. I once again salute to this legendary professor.
~ R
Incidentally, we happened to invite him to a dinner with us. It was Kenji doing this as he wanted to go from Madison after his PhD with this fantastic memory of interacting with Prof Bird once again on ‘dinner table’. We took some pictures as well. Prof Bird gave 4 of us (Kenji, Santosh, Manan and myself ) a ride to Hong Kong café. In the end he dropped us to the department.
He speaks many different languages just for fun and he usually interacts with Chinese people in their language, with dutch people in their language and so on. He was doing the same here. There was a waitress in the restaurant. She was talking in English, but prof. Bird kept talking in Chinese and then she was amazed and impressed !!
She could figure out that we were students and he was a teacher, but she asked what his subject was. I just wanted to say “ Hey ! You are talking with someone who is legendary, who is the biggest professor in Madison, and to talk with him, I had to wait till this moment. He is the so called author of so many books which are the best in their class. If there is a God of Chemical Engineering, here he is!!!!!! If he happens to take the 620 course again, I am sure there will be maximum enrollment in the course.”
But Kenji is funny! He said “He is our Chinese language teacher.” The gal was surprised this time. She could not believe. She started laughing this time.
It was prof Bird who told her in Chinese that he was a prof of Chemical Engineering.
Some of the stories that he told to us yesterday.
Food: Chinese is his favourate food. He did not like the Indian food because it had flavours. L Sad, we wanted him to invite for an Indian Dinner.
Languages: He can speak, read and write as many a 8-9 different languages, most of which he has learnt on his own. He learnt Chinese on his own and then learnt from a teacher while he was in Japan for some time. However he used to teach in English only.
World War: He was fighting in the world war and was using the mortar firing cannons a lot and which took toll on his hearing capability. He was in Germany during the world war.
Book: They printed the first edition of BSL the most famous book in transport- phenomena way back and sent it for reviews to different universities. These reviews were harsh but then after these reviews, these people took real hard pains to correct and improve each and every section to get the second edition. There are a few secrets in the book which I think a few Chemical Engineers know. He wanted to print a dutch saying in the preface but he was not allowed to and then he kept that in the book in a secret hidden way.
Kenji asked him if he had mismatch of concepts, or things like that with the other authors. He said “ So many that he was himself surprised how they talk till date J They took all pains to type everything in word, and then the publishers changed the software to print it leaving so many errors in the book that there is supposedly a person in Puorto Rico who sends him a 20 page review of errata every month or so and Prof Bird still takes all efforts for the improvement.
Work/ office: He comes at 6:30 in the office. To have an idea what it takes to wake up at 6:30, I put my alarm today at 6:30. Sadly, I switched it off and slept again L. He works till around 4:00 and then leaves for home.
Puzzles: He likes to solve very tricky puzzles. One typical which he could not solve since many days was a Japanese puzzle in which there are three rings, which loop into each other and can be separated apart with some really difficult tricks. He could not solve it though. One of my seniors looked up the solution at web but did not tell him. He expressed his disappointment in that “saying why did not he come to me to share the solution ?’
Climate: I myself can’t believe it was such a mild winter this year in Madison which has surprised almost everyone here. Prof Bird told that he has witnessed – 40 deg C in Madison. This wasn’t cold enough and was in fact disappointing for him.
History book: Prof Bird is writing the history of department of Chemical Engineering since many years and a book has been published recently.
He has so many qualities and is such a ‘down to earth’ person. I once again salute to this legendary professor.
~ R
posted by Rohit Malshe at 12:35 PM
2 Comments:
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
hey...
i dont know who tiz prof is...ofcourse if i wuz in d same field...(chemical tat is) who knowz i wud be revering him too...:)
Par it somehow feelz very nice to read tiz post of urz...
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