Martinus Tels

Professor Tels continued advising the Van Gansewinkel Group until 1996, through Swiwah B.V., a one-man company he founded (swiwah is Hebrew for "environment"). He died on 2 January 2008, after suffering a heart attack.

Tels was appointed rector magnificus of the university in 1988. In his period as rector he focused on strengthening ties with the city of Eindhoven and with local industry. He was asked to resign as rector by the university council in 1991, following the Buck-Goudsmit scandal. Although he was finally not forced out, he resigned as rector to prevent an administrative crisis at the university.

Aside from his research, Tels had a reputation for being a good teacher and employing (often self-deprecating) humor in order to engage his students. He was appointed vice dean of the department in 1977 and became dean in 1982.

Professor Tels was appointed full professor of physical technology at the department of Chemical Engineering of the Eindhoven University of Technology in 1974. In this position he researched the uses of pyrolysis in physical technology and in the separation of solid waste materials. His expertise brought him into contact with the Van Gansewinkel waste management company, which he advised for years. He was one of the first researchers in The Netherlands working on waste management; for this reason he was jokingly called "the garbage professor".

In 1960 he moved to Caltex, to become head of the distillation lab. He was with Caltex until 1969 and in that time also headed the pilot plants division and finally the division for "applied mathematics and electronic data processing". In 1967 he was also appointed extraordinary professor of Physical Technology (now called Chemical Engineering) at the University of Amsterdam; here he researched drag-reduction, the mixing of liquids in packed beds and thermal stability of adiabatic stirred reactors.

Martinus (Tinus) Tels (16 August 1926 in Rotterdam – 2 January 2008 in Veldhoven) was a Dutch physicist and chemical engineer. He was a professor of chemical engineering, dean of the department of chemical engineering and the ninth rector magnificus of the Eindhoven University of Technology.

Martinus Tels was born on 16 August 1926 in Rotterdam. He was the son of Harry Hijman Tels (a lawyer) and Lucie Juliette Elias. The Tels family was a reasonably prominent Jewish family in The Netherlands (in addition to Harry Hijman being a lawyer, Harry's grandfather Hartog Hijman Tels was the first editor of the NRC Handelsblad), as was the Elias family (the Elias family owned a large textile factory); because of this the family was added to the Barneveld group during World War II. As part of this group, Martinus Tels was interned in Barneveld, then in the Westerbork transit camp and finally in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Surviving the war, he returned to The Netherlands by way of Switzerland in 1945.