Professor John Prausnitz celebrates 90th birthday

Professor John Prausnitz surrounded by loved ones at his birthday celebration.

As part of the events of the New Vistas for Molecular Thermodynamics symposium held at the College of Chemistry in January, Professor of the Graduate School John Prausnitz was celebrated at the symposium’s banquet. The occasion was his 90th birthday. His birthday card, proportionate in size to the birthday, included photographs of the symposium speakers and their signatures.

Prausnitz’s former Ph.D. student, Jianzhong Wu, a chemical engineering professor at UC Riverside, organized the symposium. John O’Connell, another of his former Ph.D. students and a professor emeritus and former chair of the chemical engineering department at the University of Virginia, was responsible for the birthday card.

The number of investigators in molecular thermodynamics, especially in computation and modeling, has increased in recent years. The symposium explored how closer collaborations among cross-experimentation of thermodynamic problems can help define new frontiers in molecular thermodynamics, challenging the current thinking of engineering research.