John Prausnitz

Education Prausnitz was born in Berlin, Germany, on January 7, 1928. His father and his mother's stepfather were both Jewish doctors. In 1933, when the Nazi Party rescinded the licenses of Jewish doctors, they were able to continue to work because they had been Frontkämpfer, "front fighters," during World War I. Prausnitz received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton University in 1955 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "Liquid-phase turbulent mixing properties."

Career Prausnitz joined the College of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 1955, attracted by the work of Joel Hildebrand on mixtures and by the opportunity to help shape what was then a young department.

Through his work on thermodynamics and phase behavior, Prausnitz has developed the field of molecular thermodynamics, relating macroscopic properties to those of single- and multi-atom molecules. He initiated work on a number of important models for phase equilibria and the analysis of mixtures of solids, fluids, and gases, including the NRTL, UNIQUAC, and UNIFAC models. He is recognized for his engineering-oriented approach to molecular thermodynamics His books include Computer Calculations of Vapor−Liquid Equilibria (1967), the graduate textbook Molecular Thermodynamics of Fluid-Phase Equilibria (1969; 1986; 1999), and later editions of Regular and Related Solutions (1970) and The Properties of Gases and Liquids (1977; 1987; 2001).

Personal life John Prausnitz has a son, Mark Prausnitz, who is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Awards Prausnitz was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1973 and the National Academy of Engineering in 1979 for contributions to the thermodynamics of phase equilibria and its application to industrial process design. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1988. to the National Medal of Science for his work in engineering-oriented molecular thermodynamics in 2003. In 2012, he received the Lifetime Achievement in Chemical Engineering Pedagogical Scholarship, given by the American Society for Engineering Education.

As of 2016, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers renamed the Institute Lecturer Award in his honor as the John M. Prausnitz AIChE Institute Lecturer Award.