Frank Wicks (engineer educator)
Frank Wicks is an American engineer, inventor, writer, educator, peace and social justice activist and community leader. He has served as a shipboard engineer and worked in the development, testing and analysis of aircraft engines, turbines, naval and civilian nuclear power plants and electric power systems.
Early and personal life[edit]
Frank Wicks was born on March 5, 1939 in Watertown, New York. He was the second of four children. He grew up in Canton, New York, where he was educated in public schools. His mother Hazel Wicks was a business teacher. His father Rollo Wicks was a professor. Rollo Wicks attended Syracuse University and then Cornell, where he received a PhD in political science. His research was the reaction of southern Democrats to the New Deal programs of the Franklin Roosevelt administration. Rollo Wicks wrote the textbook Man and Modern Society.[2] Rollo Wicks had grown up in hard scrabble farm with no power equipment nor electricity. He was the only surviving child after the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic took the lives of a sister and brother.
Frank Wicks married school teacher Virginia Dawn Garilli in 1964. They have two children.
Education[edit]
Frank Wicks studied for a B.Marine.E degree at SUNY Maritime at Fort Schuyler. He received a Coast Guard license to serve as an engineer on Ocean Steam and Motor Vessels and a commission as an officer in the United States Navy Reserve. He was awarded an MSEE from Union College and PhD in Nuclear Engineering and Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Frank Wicks is a licensed pilot of powered aircraft and gliders. He advised engineering students for a national Aero competition with remote controlled aircraft. He published a report about Maynard Hill's 2003 achievement of flying a model aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean and the development of remote controlled aircraft.[3]
Inventions and achievements[edit]
His invention and development[5] of a residential Electricity Producing Condensing Furnace[6] received an Energy Resources and Technology Innovation Award by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers(ASME).
He is an ASME Fellow and a frequent contributor to Mechanical Engineering magazine. He initiated, curated and contributed to exhibitions in the iconic Union College Nott Memorial, including inventor, engineer, and industrialist George Westinghouse, American scientist and founding secretary of the Smithsonian Institute Joseph Henry, and the Erie Canal.
Teaching[edit]
Frank Wicks taught nuclear engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute while supervising the university nuclear reactor. He developed a sequence of experiments and mathematical methods to make non-nuclear electric utility engineers familiar with nuclear engineering principles.
He taught mechanical engineering at Union College. He served in all officer positions of the Energy Conversion and Conservation Division of the American Society for Engineering Education. Using the First and Second Law of Thermodynamics he developed the conditions and efficiency for an ideal fuel burning engine, along with a three-process cycle that achieves the ideal efficiency. It is also known as the Wicks Thermodynamically Ideal Engine Cycle.[7]
He has been active in groups working to eliminate nuclear weapons. He has been a Republican and Nuclear Weapons Freeze candidate for United States Congress.
Community Service and Statues[edit]
Frank Wicks initiated life size bronze statues of Union College alumnus Willian Seward who was a progressive New York State governor and a leading antislavery United States senator. Seward was a confidante of President Abraham Lincoln and his Secretary of State during the Civil War. Seward also negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia. He was a friend and supporter of escaped slave and Underground Railroad icon Harriet Tubman. The statue at the Schenectady Public Library has the theme "Leaders, Freedom, Friendship, Diversity" and "By the people, for the people".[8]
Frank Wicks worked with citizen initiator Brian Merriam to create life size bronze statues of electricity pioneers Thomas Edison and Charles Steinmetz on Erie Boulevard and South Ferry Street in Schenectady, New York.
Frank Wicks has initiated a bronze statue of George Westinghouse on Erie Boulevard and South Ferry Street in Schenectady, New York. Adjacent to the statue of Thomas Edison and Charles Steinmetz.
Frank Wicks is a partner in Schenectady and Saratoga legacy radio station WPTR that in 2020 was returned to broadcasting as a community service station.[9]
References[edit]
- ↑ "Wicks on Nuclear Energy, Electric Cars and more". Youtube. 20 December 2017. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Wicks, Rollo (1958). Man and Modern Society. ISBN 978-0070701052. Search this book on
- ↑ A model mission: opening the second century of flight, a team sends a small plane 1,900 miles across the Atlantic--with no one on board
- ↑ Glimore, V. Elaine. "Home-size cogenerator", Popular Science, vol. 234, No. 3, ISSN 0161-7370, Mar 1989, pp. 82, 84
- ↑ F. Wicks, E. Dykstra, M. Arnold, D. DeBerardinis and N. Leavitt, "Development of a residential size electricity producing condensing furnace," Proceedings of the 24th Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference, 1989, pp. 1909-1914 vol.4, doi: 10.1109/IECEC.1989.74732.
- ↑ "Electricity producing ultra high efficiency furnace", issued 1985-11-29
- ↑ Wicks Thermodynamically Ideal Engine Cycle Everybody wiki
- ↑ HARRIET TUBMAN AND WILLIAM SEWARD, Leaders for Freedom and Justice
- ↑ Old radio station, WPTR, back on the air, with a new mission, Times Union
This article "Frank Wicks (engineer educator)" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
