2025/07/01 by Peter Davidson · 1 voice
Engineering · #Granular flow and fluidized beds
paper · doi:10.1098/rsbm.2025.0004
openalex publication_date 2025/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
John Davidson was an engineer who made major contributions to chemical engineering science. His elegant and concise analytical models have underpinned the development of fluidised bed reactors used in key process technologies and elucidated the mass transfer processes of the bubbling fermenters used in biological and pharmaceutical applications. He was widely admired for his practical skill, inventive experimental design and scientific insight. From a modest background, he graduated top of the Mechanical Sciences Tripos at Cambridge. After a brief spell at Rolls Royce, he was elected to a research fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. Following a PhD in structural engineering, he joined the newly formed Chemical Engineering Department at Cambridge, where, with his fellowship at Trinity, he found fulfilment in teaching and research. As a member of the Flixborough Court of Inquiry, he developed methods of ensuring the safety of industrial plants that are now used around the world. He was President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, Vice-Master of Trinity College, and Vice-President of the Royal Society. Through his industrial consultancies, he gave technological guidance to companies in the UK and overseas. Despite his scientific distinction, he was always determined to remain a ‘real engineer’, rather than an ‘engineering scientist’. He brought together academics and industrialists to work on significant problems, as well as forging links between chemical engineering and biotechnology that led to the development of new biopharmaceutical processes.