John Shipley Rowlinson

Sir John Shipley Rowlinson (12 May 1926 – 15 August 2018) was a British chemist. He attended Oxford University, where he completed his undergraduate studies in 1948 and doctoral in 1950. He then became research associate at University of Wisconsin (1950–1951), lecturer at University of Manchester (1951–1961), Professor at Imperial College London (1961–1973) and back at Oxford from 1974 to his retirement in 1993.

His works covered a wide range of subjects, including on capillarity (the ability of a liquid to flow in narrow spaces without the assistance of, or even in opposition to, external forces like gravity) and cohesion (forces that make similar molecules stick together). In addition, he wrote about the history of science, including multiple works on the Dutch physicist Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837–1923). He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering. He received a Faraday Lectureship Prize in 1983 and was knighted in 2000.

Early life Born in Handforth, Cheshire, on 12 May 1926, Rowlinson attended the independent Rossall School in Fleetwood. He was educated at Trinity College, Oxford, where in 1944 he was awarded a Millard scholarship to read chemistry. His tutor was Professor Sir Cyril Hinshelwood, who was the first head of the Physical Chemistry Laboratory. He graduated with first-class honours in 1948. After graduation, he continued his studies at Oxford and received a D.Phil. in 1950 in chemical kinetics, working under J. D. Lambert. In 1974, he moved to Oxford as Dr Lee's Professor of Chemistry. He was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1976.

Work Capillarity (experiment onboard the International Space Station pictured) was one of Rowlinson's main areas of focus. Throughout his career, Rowlinson wrote more than 200 papers and book chapters. While he contributed to a wide range of topics, his main areas of focus were capillarity and cohesion (forces that make molecules 'stick' together).