An
Appreciation by Douglas W. Fuerstenau and Raja V.
Raman
Frank Fulton Aplan graduated from South Dakota Mines in 1948 with a degree in metallurgical engineering and went on to become one
of the most influential leaders of the mineral processing industry and academia
for the past 60 years. Aplan, was who was also a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at The Pennsylvania
State University, passed away peacefully at Berwick, Pennsylvania on Tuesday,
November 3, 2020. His association with
the mineral engineering profession had many dimensions – an engineer, a
scientist, a manager of research, and a teacher to name a few, and his
performance in each of these roles, simply outstanding. Most
of all, Frank was an outstanding human being, brilliant, dedicated, gritty, hardworking and demanding. He
expected excellence from himself, and from everyone else. All his friends have
learned many lessons to accept and deal with adversity from Frank's four
difficult but successful campaigns against cancer. He was a warm and friendly person
who assuredly provided wise counsel and a helping hand. Frank often said that “no man is an island.
There is a half dozen or more people that probably helped you along career. I
guess that my philosophy is that often you cannot pay back but you can pay
forward…. that is why I've gone out of my way to recommend all kinds of people
for awards and honors and so forth and I try to give generously to charity and
education.” Frank practiced what he said and will be missed.
- He was extremely proud of his wartime service. He served as an infantryman in a rifle company of the 69th Infantry
Division carrying a mortar across Europe during World War II where he received
the Combat Infantrymen's Badge and Bronze Star Medal. Discharged as a T/Sgt., in
1946, he re-entered South Dakota Mines where he earned a BS degree in Metallurgical
Engineering in 1948. Subsequently, he received a MS in Mineral Dressing
Engineering from Montana School of Mines, later known as Montana Tech (MT) in
1950. During the 1948-51 period, Frank worked in Homestake, Day Mines, and
Climax Molybdenum and from 1951-53, as an Assistant Professor at the University
of Washington (Seattle). He joined The
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a graduate student in Mineral
Engineering (Metallurgy) and received his ScD in 1957 for a classic piece of
work on the thermodynamics of the adsorption of hexyl mercaptan on gold. While
at MIT, he met and married Clare M. Donaghue of Dorchester, MA on July 30,
1955.
- After MIT, Frank
joined the research in Salt Lake City as a Senior Scientist but soon accepted
an offer from Union Carbide as research engineer in the Research Laboratories
of Electrometallurgical Company in Niagara Falls as he felt “they had an
excellent laboratory…there were close to two hundred people there…It was the
best post graduate school in the field."
By 1968, Frank had risen to Group Manager and was closely involved in
the development of processing a wide range of ores for Carbide’s domestic and international production of a
multitude of metals and non-metals that led him to justly claim “you name the
commodity, and I have probably worked with it one time or other.” During this period,
he traveled to many
of these operations, and particularly in their development and early operational stages, gaining the skill for which he later became an acknowledged leader –
integrating theory with practice in the processing of coal, ores and industrial
minerals.
Frank joined Penn
State in 1968 as Professor and Head of the then Department of Mineral
Preparation and moved quickly to enlarge the research program on the science
and technology of mineral processing, particularly in the area of coal
flotation because of the importance of coal mining to the state of
Pennsylvania. In addition, he initiated new programs in particle technology,
applied surface chemistry, chemical processing and mathematical modeling of
processes. By the time he retired in
1992, he had also served as the Chairman of Mineral Processing and Metallurgy programs
and a guiding member of the newly formed Environmental Systems Engineering
program in the Department of Mineral Engineering. The growth of the Penn State Mineral
Processing program to a pre-eminent status was primarily attributable to
Frank’s own breadth and depth of academic and industrial experiences and his
outstanding leadership in attracting and fostering young faculty to be leaders
on their own. Frank was a world
authority on flotation processes, especially known for his fundamental studies
of the wetting of solids and their control through the adsorption of surfactant
films, and for his work on the effect of atomic defects on the properties and
behavior of solid-liquid interfaces. His contributions to the areas of gravity
concentration, suspension rheology, industrial mineral processing, and
environmental pollution control are substantial. At Penn State, he supervised
about fifty MS and PhD candidates, and developed and taught several
new undergraduate and graduate courses to literally hundreds of students from
several other programs. A demanding but
master teacher, undergraduate students loved attending his classes and
listening to insightful stories of plant experiences that
he sprinkled in his lectures. In directing graduate students, his principal aim
was to develop in them self-reliance and independence, qualities he knew from
his own experience as essential keys to success and a task in which he
excelled. Penn State recognized his outstanding performances with the Mathew J.
and Anne C. Wilson Excellence in Teaching Award in 1977 and naming him to the
first class of Distinguished Professors in 1990. At the national level, his
outstanding teaching was recognized in 1992 with the AIME Mineral Industry
Education Award. Even after
retirement, he remained active for more than a decade, teaching classes,
directing students and attending technical meetings. At the time of his
retirement, Frank
F. and Clare M. Aplan Centennial Scholarship in Mineral Engineering was
established and endowed at Penn State to celebrate Frank's contributions and
encourage future generations to follow his lead. At Mines, Frank had established The Frank F. and Clare M. Aplan Native
American Fund in Metallurgy to support a scholarship for native Americans to
attend Mines.
Frank was a major
contributor to the affairs of professional societies and to technical symposia
and congresses. The technical societies that he belonged to were several and
included American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers
[AIME], Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration [SME], The Metallurgical
Society [TMS], Engineering Foundation, American Chemical Society, American
Institute of Chemical Engineers, and Archeological Institute of America to name
some specific ones and his services to each of them, in both trenches and
leadership, were extensive. He was a
member of the Board of Directors [SME] and Engineering Foundation, a chair of
the Mineral Processing Division [SME] and Hydrometallurgy Committee [TMS], a
member of the editorial board, co-editor, and section editor for major books
including Mineral Processing Handbook [SME], Froth Flotation [SME], and
Solution Mining [TMS] and a program evaluation visitor for the Accreditation
Board for Engineering and Technology [ABET] for mineral processing [SME] and
metallurgy [TMS] programs. In addition, he authored, presented and published
over 150 research papers in prestigious journals, national and international
symposiums that would continue to illuminate mineral processing aspirants with
his findings and knowledge. Frank was extremely active in Engineering
Foundation conferences, chairing a conference on fine and ultrafine particles
in 1967 and serving as a member of their conference committees from about
1975. He was on the Board of Directors
of the Engineering Foundation from 1977 onwards and served as its Chairman from
1987 to 1989. His dedicated and
distinguished service as board chairman was recognized by the Engineering
Foundation in 1989 by establishing, in his honor, the annual Frank F. Aplan
Award as a tribute to his "lifelong productive career in coal and mineral
processing research and education"
to be awarded to eminent contributors to the mineral processing field
and awarding him the first ever – a distinct honor indeed. Mineral processing researchers around the
world appreciated his role in their lives and in the field of mineral
processing by contributing papers to a special volume of The International
Journal of Mineral Processing [Volume 17 (3-4), 1998] in honor of his
seventy-fifth birthday. In 2003 Frank’s oral history, Mineral Education Generalist, Professor
of Metallurgy and Mineral Processing, 1951-1998 was published by the Oral
History Center of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, as
part of The Western Mining in the Twentieth Century Series
Frank’s
contributions to the science, engineering and education of mineral processing
have been widely acknowledged by his peers with several prestigious awards: Honoris
Causa, Engineer of Mines, Montana School of Mines and Technology [1968], Distinguished
Member of SME [1978], Robert H. Richards Award of AIME [1978], Arthur F.
Taggart Award of SME [1985], Centennial 100 Alumni of the South Dakota School
of Mines and Technology [1985], Elected Member of National Academy of
Engineering [1989], Honorary Member of AIME [1992], Antoine M. Gaudin Award of
SME [1992], Outstanding Alumnus Award of
the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology [1996], AIME/ASME Percy Nichols
Award [1997], South Dakota Hall of Fame
[1998]. Chancellor’s Medallion, Montana Tech [2015], and National Mining Hall
of Fame [2016]
For all Frank's name and
fame in the profession, he was a very modest, devoted family man. He was widely read, an avid photographer and
a lover of jazz and theater. Frank's other interests included crawling around
most of the old mills and ghost mining camps of the West, mining history of the
Western U.S., the U.S. military and the railroad. His keen sense of humor and
repertoire of stories and anecdotes were always counted on for an enjoyable
time in his company.
Frank was preceded in
death by his wife of 55 years Clare and daughter Margaret Anne
in childhood. He is survived by his daughters Susan Bower and Lucy,
son Peter, and five grandchildren and four great grandchildren.