Wilhelm Nusselt

Ernst Kraft Wilhelm Nusselt was a German mechanical engineer whose work helped establish modern heat-transfer theory. His nondimensionalization of convective heat transfer led to a widely used framework for correlating heat-transfer data, including the dimensionless group now called the Nusselt number. His theory of laminar film condensation, which identified the condensate film as the principal resistance to heat flow, yielded mathematical solutions still used today. Both results have become standard topics in heat-transfer textbooks.