Yesterday morning I received a telephone call from Hermy, the wife of Klaus Hein who told me that Mike Heap had passed on. He died peacefully in his sleep at his home. She asked me to tell the IFRF.

This is news that I find very difficult to accept. Mike according to my own experience, and to all those that have talked to me about him, was always immensely alive. He had the reputation of boundless energy. The man who never stopped until he "knew how it worked"; until he had accomplished the goals that he had set himself. He was the man that introduced the camp bed into the control room of the IFRF Research Station so that he could always be around when the 'all important result' was collected. This approach to life and work continued when he went to California and worked with Tom Tyson in the development of the company which became known as EERC. It was still continuing until this weekend in the development of his last major venture, Reaction Engineering International in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Mike Heap (Photo) joined the IFRF right at the end of the 1960's and worked on Tom  Lowes' team. He stayed until the mid 1970s. He was the Principle Investigator working on the US Environmental Protection Agency funded series of trials through which it was demonstrated that NOx emissions could be controlled effectively through combustion modification. The results of this work had an enormous influence on all low NOx burner design the world over. I joined the IFRF at the end of the 1970s and I know that these results laid a solid foundation for the work of the IFRF all through the 1980s. This of course was not done single-handedly. It was the result of team work. But I have no doubt in my mind that the success was strongly due to the incessant drive of Mike Heap.

Mike was to the end a Foundation man. What I mean by that was that he always maintained a strong contact with his international network of friends and colleagues that grew from his experience at the IFRF Research Station. I am sure I represent all these people and the subsequent teams at IJmuiden when I send our condolences to his family, his close friends and all his colleagues.

Peter Roberts