Congratulations to Professor Jackson on winning the inaugural Guggenheim Medal for his outstanding work in thermodynamics and complex fluids.

He received the award at the Thermodynamics 2015 conference in Copenhagen in September this year.

Named after Professor Edward A. Guggenheim, the IChemE medal created in 2014 was established to honour the English thermodynamicist whose work was said to be in part responsible for the foundations of the science of chemical thermodynamics. Professor Guggenheim was also a Lecturer/Reader in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College from 1936 to 1946 where he published his seminal paper on corresponding states. The Guggenheim medal is presented to individuals who have made important contributions to the field. Professor Jackson was recognised for his unique combination of research that was theoretically based but had much wider and immediate applications in the oil and gas, chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

Prior to receiving the medal, Professor Jackson also gave a lecture at the Thermodynamics 2015 conference titled ‘The Legacy of Edward Guggenheim to Statistical Thermodynamics’ which described how the late Professor Guggenheim had influenced his latest research into statistical associating fluid theory. His medal was presented to him by the director of the National Centre for Scientific Research in Greece, Dr Ioannis G Economou.

Professor Jackson’s research interests lie in finding ways to describe matter at the molecular level through a combination of statistical mechanical theories and computer simulations. The tools and theory are used by his research group to provide robust predictive models for the behaviour of complex fluids at the molecular level. Among his many accomplishments is the development of a highly accurate equation of state for the thermodynamic properties of complex fluid mixtures called Statistical Associating Fluid Theory for Potentials of Variable Range (SAFT-VR). His research group has also gained widespread recognition for their work in gaining a fundamental understanding of the effect of various molecular parameters on the stability of liquid crystalline phases.

Professor Jackson is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the paper ‘New Reference Equation of State for Associating Liquids’  is among the 15 most cited papers in the Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research. 

Read more about Professor Jackson's research interests and the IChemE Guggenheim Medal.

Based on a news release published by IChemE on 28 September 2015.