Professor honoured for significant contribution to phase theory

Professor George Jackson, Department of Chemical Engineering

Professor George Jackson has been awarded the Bakhuis Roozeboom Medal by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

George Jackson, Professor of Chemical Physics in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London, is a world leader in the development and use of molecular methods to simulate the thermodynamic properties of complex fluids. 

He is receiving the medal in recognition of his modelling of the thermodynamic behaviour of complex fluids, which are used in the carbon capture, oil and gas exploration, and pharmaceutical industries, among others.  

Professor Jackson is one of the researchers responsible for the development of the statistical associating fluid theory (SAFT), a group of equations of state that very precisely predicts the thermodynamic properties of complex fluid mixtures. 

The award of Bakhuis Roozeboom Medal is simply wonderful to me. I am very honoured and humbled by this Professor George Jackson Department of Chemical Engineering

His research, which is both theoretical and application-driven, has been at the forefront of Molecular Systems Engineering, a new discipline in which engineers investigate processes and products at the molecular level. 

During the course of his career Professor Jackson has developed models which predict the thermodynamics, structure, and transport of mixtures, and the conditions under which equilibria will occur between the fluid phases of the individual components. His work has led to a better understanding of the behaviour of all kinds of mixtures, ranging from liquid crystals, polymers and membranes to biological systems.? 

These models have been used by companies including Shell, BP, Pfizer, P&G and the Borealis Group in a range of industrial applications, from gas extraction and comestics, to pharmaceuticals and carbon capture and storage.  

Profesor Jackson said: "The award of Bakhuis Roozeboom Medal is simply wonderful to me. I am very honoured and humbled by this as I have been a great admirer of van der Waals and his Dutch school of phase behaviour since the very start of my PhD."

"Last year Keith Gubbins gave me an original printing of Bakhuis Roozeboom's 1901 book (Die Heterogenen Gleichchgewichte von Standpunkte der Phasenlehre), which is simply beautiful especially the plates of his models of solid-liquid-gas phase behaviour."

Professor George Jackson has been professor of Chemical Physics at Imperial College London (UK) since 2001. After receiving his PhD at the University of Oxford, he worked at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York (USA) and the University of Sheffield (UK). 

He has been a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry since 1995 and the Mexican Academy of Molecular Engineering since 2001. In 2014 he was awarded the Guggenheim Medal for Excellence in Thermodynamics from the Institution of Chemical Engineers, and will be receiving the 2020 Rossini Award from International Association of Chemical Thermodynamics. His research group received the Research Excellence Award in 2009 and the Imperial College London President's Award for Outstanding Research Team in 2016. 

Bakhuis Roozeboom Medal 

A group of scholars established the Bakhuis Roozeboom Medal in 1911 in recognition of the work of the physicist and Academy member Prof. H.W. Bakhuis Roozeboom (1854-1907). The medal is awarded every four years to a researcher who has made a significant contribution to phase theory. The laureate will take receipt of the medal during a special ceremony on 20 January 2020.