TOP FIVE CHEMICAL ENGINEERS

As this blog is primarily related to the chemical engineering discipline, I thought I would take the opportunity to countdown a few important facts and stories from the wonderful world of chemical engineering.

I would like to start by listing the five most important chemical engineering personalities who used their skills and knowledge to shape the world and our living by the principles of chemical engineering.

1.      GEORGE E. DAVIS

He is regarded as the FOUNDING FATHER of chemical engineering. Any list of chemical engineers would not be complete without him. From the emergence of chemical engineering in the late 1800s, he is the one who shaped it. He coined the term ‘chemical engineering’. He delivered the first course of chemical discipline at The University of Manchester in 1887 in the form of 12 lectures which covers the different aspects of industrial chemical practice- this kick-started the revolution that spawned generations of world-changing chemical engineers.

2.      ARTHUR D LITTLE

He is often regarded as the ‘American father’ of chemical engineering. He not only a graduate of chemical engineering but also he found an international consultancy firm that bears his name. He also developed the concept of UNIT OPERATIONS (a basic step in a process that involves a physical change or chemical transformation like evaporation or filtration), which is helpful in determining the role of chemical engineers and explain the industrial chemical processes. Arthur was passionate about researching and improving processes but this made him and his company a success.

3.       CARL BOSCH

Without Carl Bosch, it is not possible to make a list of outstanding chemical engineers. The TCE (The Chemical Engineer) magazine voted Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch as the most influential chemical engineers of all time. Fritz Haber is an industrial chemist who developed the Haber process but was scaled up by Carl Bosch in the name of Haber-Bosch who is a chemical engineer. It is the process of producing Ammonia by utilizing the Nitrogen from the air. This work made it possible to produce synthetic fertilizers and thus produce enough food for the Earth’s growing population. Without it, we would only be able to produce two-thirds the amount of food we do today.

4.      MARGARET HUTCHINSON ROUSSEAU

The mass production of PENICILLIN was a key moment in world history; not only for the billions of life it saved (and stills saves today) but also for the chemical engineering involved. ‘D-Day: a day chemical engineers should remember’, I discuss Jasper Kane and John McKeen’s contribution to the industrial scale-up of penicillin. However, there was another important penicillin pioneer – Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau. Margaret was not only the first woman to receive a chemical engineering doctorate from MIT, but she also designed the first commercial penicillin plant. Margaret developed the process of deep-tank fermentation which enabled large-scale production of penicillin.

5.      DERMOT MANNING

It is hard to imagine a world without plastic. The discovery of polyethylene (or polythene) was actually made twice, initially by German chemist Hans von Pechmann in 1898, and then again by two research chemists – Reginald Gibson and Eric Fawcett from ICI in 1933. A third ICI chemist, Michael Perrin, made the crucial breakthrough in understanding polythene and its production that turned plastic into a possibility. However, it took a chemical engineer, Dermot Manning, to make the experiment possible by building a high-pressure reactor. Dermot also enabled polythene to move from pilot, to demonstration, to full-scale production.