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We have all heard of Willis Haviland Carrier as the engineer and inventor, and who is known as the man who invented modern air conditioning. At the age of 25, he devised his first important invention, a system to control heat and humidity for the Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing and Publishing Company in Brooklyn, and was eventually made the head of the Buffalo Forge subsidiary named Carrier Air Conditioning Company in his honor.

Not many may have heard of Gintautas “Gint” Povilas Mitalas.


Photo courtesy IBPSANews

Gint was born in Lithuania in April 1928. In 1953 he went to the University of Toronto to study mechanical engineering, graduating with a BASc in 1957 and an MSc in 1959. Gint joined the staff of the National Research Council of Canada in 1959 to work in the Division of Building Research, where he was part of a small group that was exploring ways to improve the accuracy of the calculation of heat transfer through walls. In the early 1960s he used an analog computer to simulate the heat flow through walls and roofs. Later he shifted his effort to using digital computers for calculating heat gain through walls and roofs. This led to the Response Factor approach, and finally to the Z -Transfer Function method that was adopted by ASHRAE. He became a member of ASHRAE in 1966.

Gint presented two papers at the highly successful “First international symposium on the use of computers for environmental engineering related to buildings” that was held in Washington, DC in 1970.

IBPSA makes awards for outstanding work in the building performance simulation field. It was first awarded in 1991 to Gint Mitalas for his outstanding service and lifetime accomplishments in building simulation.

He passed away in Ottawa, Canada on 13 May 2005.

Gint shall be remembered for his pioneering work on energy simulation which has lead to the current revolution in whole building energy simulation software.
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