Attention NAE Members
Starting June 30, 2023, login credentials have changed for improved security. For technical assistance, please contact us at 866-291-3932 or helpdesk@nas.edu. For all other inquiries, please contact our Membership Office at 202-334-2198 or NAEMember@nae.edu.
Click here to login if you're an NAE Member
Recover Your Account Information
This is the 21st Volume in the series Memorial Tributes compiled by the National Academy of Engineering as a personal remembrance of the lives and outstanding achievements of its members and international members. These volumes are intended to stand as an enduring record of the many contributions of engineers and engineering to the benefit of humankind. In most cases, the authors of the tributes are contemporaries or colleagues who had personal knowledge of the interests and the engineering accomplishments of the deceased. Through its members and international members, the Academy carries...
This is the 21st Volume in the series Memorial Tributes compiled by the National Academy of Engineering as a personal remembrance of the lives and outstanding achievements of its members and international members. These volumes are intended to stand as an enduring record of the many contributions of engineers and engineering to the benefit of humankind. In most cases, the authors of the tributes are contemporaries or colleagues who had personal knowledge of the interests and the engineering accomplishments of the deceased. Through its members and international members, the Academy carries out the responsibilities for which it was established in 1964.
Under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering was formed as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. Members are elected on the basis of significant contributions to engineering theory and practice and to the literature of engineering or on the basis of demonstrated unusual accomplishments in the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology. The National Academies share a responsibility to advise the federal government on matters of science and technology. The expertise and credibility that the National Academy of Engineering brings to that task stem directly from the abilities, interests, and achievements of our members and international members, our colleagues and friends, whose special gifts we remember in this book.
Results Found
BY MICHAEL CORRADINI AND NEIL TODREAS
MUJID S. KAZIMI, Tokyo Electric Power Company Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lifelong educator and international leader in nuclear reactor engineering, reactor safety, and the nuclear fuel cycle, died July 1, 2015, at the age of 67 while traveling in China. He had a heart attack.
Mujid was born in Jerusalem November 20, 1947, and later moved with his family to Amman, Jordan. After earning his bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering from Alexandria University in Egypt in 1969, he came to MIT, where he earned his SM in 1971 and PhD in 1973.
He worked briefly at Westinghouse Electric Corp. and Brookhaven National Laboratory before joining the MIT faculty in 1976. He held faculty appointments in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (chair, 1989–1997) and Department of Mechanical Engineering, and was director of both MIT’s Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems and the Kuwait-MIT Center for Natural Resources and the Environment.
He was a world-renowned authority on the design and analysis of nuclear power plants, nuclear safety, and the nuclear fuel cycle (both fission and fusion). He and his students made many important technological advances designed to enhance the safety and economics of nuclear power, including the developments of annular nuclear fuel with internal and external cooling, and a ceramic fuel cladding made of silicon carbide to replace the zirconium alloy cladding used in most reactor fuel. His research group also made influential contributions to the development of technological strategies for the nuclear fuel cycle.
He was an active member of the nuclear engineering faculty at MIT, and his contributions to the development of the department and the field of nuclear engineering were extraordinary. He supervised more than 100 PhD and MS theses, and coauthored the widely used two-volume textbook Nuclear Systems (with Neil Todreas; CRC Press, 1989).
Both before and after his service as head of the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department, he took on many other leadership positions at MIT. At the time of his death he was chair of the department’s graduate committee, a post he had held for many years. He was a wise and judicious administrator, a talented negotiator, and a selfless and always constructive colleague.
He was also much in demand as an advisor on nuclear research and education to governments and other organizations around the world. He served on and led numerous professional technical committees, review panels, and advisory boards, including the US Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee, for which he chaired the subcommittee on nuclear reactor technology.
Mujid received many honors for his scientific and engineering work. He was a member of the International Nuclear Energy Academy and American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a fellow of the American Nuclear Society. In 2011 he received the TAKREEM Arab Achievement Award for Scientific and Technological Achievement, and in the same year he was awarded the Kuwait Prize in Applied Sciences by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science.
Throughout his life he was a strong advocate for educational and scientific advancement across the Arab world, an active member of many educational, humanitarian, and developmental organizations in the Middle East. He served on the board of trustees of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, a committee on the rejuvenation of scientific research in Kuwait, and the international advisory board on nuclear energy for the United Arab Emirates. While a student he was president of the MIT Arab Students’ Organization, and he continued to support it as a faculty member. His leadership on scientific and educational development in the Middle East was a source of inspiration and pride for MIT’s many Arab students and alumni.
What this long list of roles, achievements, honors, and service cannot adequately convey are the very special qualities of Mujid as a teacher, mentor, and colleague. A modest and unassuming man despite his eminence, he was kind, thoughtful, patient, and always gracious and respectful toward his students and his colleagues. His dedication and loyalty to his students were inspirational. He was truly a gentleman and a scholar in every sense.
Mujid addressed great challenges with diligence, humility, and effectiveness. He represented the very best of what an educator and researcher should be in engineering. His friends and colleagues are deeply grateful for the honor of having known and served with him. He will be greatly missed.
Mujid is survived by his wife of 41 years, Nazik Denny, daughter Yasmeen and sons Marwan and Omar, and three grandchildren.