A senior professor at the Technical University of Denmark, Fanger studied the indoor environment — and found that air quality, for instance, is sometimes worse indoors than even the air in smoggy cities. Then, he and his team at the International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy studied the implications, from increased childhood asthma to reduced human productivity in offices.
Fanger developed a comfort model for indoor quality, predicting perceived air quality in the indoor environment and required ventilation in buildings. He showed, through extensive field studies, that pollution from building materials, electronic devices, and air conditioning systems is often a major reason for poor indoor air quality. “He gave birth to the field,” said Ed Bogucz, the executive director of the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems. “He was, quite simply, a pioneer who was the first really to write down in a very scholarly way the interactions between a human being and their environment.”
Fanger, who was a visiting professor at New York’s Syracuse University, died September 18 from a ruptured aortic aneurism while visiting the Syracuse campus. He was 72.