Octave Levenspiel (January 1, 1926 – March 5, 2017) was a professor of chemical engineering at Oregon State University (OSU).
His principal interest was chemical reaction engineering, and he was the author of a major textbook Chemical Reaction Engineering as well as numerous research publications.
[1] Levenspiel was born in Shanghai, Republic of China, in 1926, the son of Abe and Lily Levenspiel, who were Polish Jews who had gone to China to escape oppression in Europe.
[2] At the age of 15, he was on a ship to the US when the Attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, so he was interned in Manila until the end of the war.
He obtained his PhD from OSU in 1952, and after a period teaching at other schools returned to OSU where he spent the remainder of his career, retiring in 1991 but continuing as emeritus professor.