John Francis Richardson OBE (29 July 1920 – 4 January 2011) was a UK chemical engineering academic, notable for his research into multiphase flow and rheology, but best known for a series of textbooks.
Richardson was born 29 July 1920 in Palmers Green, London,[1] and achieved a first class BSc (Eng) in chemical engineering at Imperial College, London, in 1941 and a PhD at the same institution in 1949.[2] [3] He joined the academic staff and rose to Senior Lecturer.
In 1946 he was one of the founder members of the Society for International Folk Dancinghttp://www.sifd.org/, along with Joan White, whom he married in 1955. They were married until his death.[4] He continued in dancing despite the loss of a leg in 1979.[5]
In 1960 he was appointed Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at University College Swansea, where he remained till his retirement in 1987.[2] In 1969 he was awarded the Arnold Greene Medal of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, and he was its President from 1975 to 1976.[2] He was also a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.[3] He was awarded the OBE in the 1981 New Year Honours List for services to industry via his work on various government and other committees.[3]
Richardson died on 4 January 2011.[6] [7]
A full list was published in Chemical Engineering Research and Design in 2006.[8]
Richardson's first paper was on the fire hazards of liquid methane[9] and further papers on fire hazards followed until 1952 when he began to move into multi-phase flow (particularly gas–liquid flows) and rheology which became his main focus: his research was honoured in two issues of Chemical Engineering Research and Design.[2] [3]
He co-wrote a textbook on chemical engineering with John Coulson (published in 1954), which developed into an established series of six texts now known as Coulson & Richardson's Chemical Engineering. (He and Coulson were largely responsible for the contents of the first two volumes: they were editors but not prime authors for the rest of the series of six volumes.) He continued editing the series after the death of Coulson in 1990.