This book has come about by chance.
The first author, Said Elnashaie, and his wife, Shadia Elshishini, moved next door to
the second author, Frank Uhlig, and his family in 2000. The two families became good
neighbors and friends. Their chats covered the usual topics and occasionally included
random teaching, departmental, and university matters.
One summer day in 2003, Said showed Frank a numerical engineering book that he had
been asked to review. Neither of them liked what they saw. Frank eventually brought
over his “Numerical Algorithms” book and Said liked it. Then Said brought over his
latest Modeling book and Frank liked it, too. And almost immediately this Numerical
Chemical and Biological Engineering book project started to take shape.
Said had always felt more mathematically inclined in his work on modeling problems and
bifurcation and chaos in chemical/biological engineering;
Frank had lately turned more numerical in his perception and efforts as a mathematician.
This book is the outcome of Said’s move to Auburn University and his chance moving
in next door to Frank. It was born by a wonderful coincidence!
Said and Frank’s long evening walks through Cary Woods contributed considerably towards
most of the new ideas and the educational approach in this book. We have both
learned much about numerics, chemical/biological engineering, book writing, and thinking
in our effort to present undergraduates with state of the art chemical/biological
engineering models and state of the art numerics for modern chemical/biological engineering
problems.
Chadia is a chemical engineer who has turned towards applied mathematics in her graduate
studies at Auburn University and has helped us bridge the gap between our individual
perspectives.
The result is an interdisciplinary, totally modern book, in contents, treatment, and spirit.
We hope that the readers and students will enjoy the book and benefit from it.
For help with our computers and computer software issues we are indebted to A. J., to
Saad, and to Darrell.
