John Coulson

Who was John Coulson?

John Metcalfe Coulson was a British chemical engineering academic particularly known for co-writing a textbook on chemical engineering with Jack Richardson, which became an established series of texts now known as Coulson & Richardson's Chemical Engineering.

John Coulson was the twin brother of Charles Alfred Coulson, the noted chemist. Their father was Alfred Coulson and their mother was Annie Sincere Hancock, a school headmistress.

He did his first degree at Cambridge, then a postgraduate course in Chemical Engineering at Imperial College followed by research, achieving a PhD in 1935. He joined the academic staff, achieving the status of Reader. In 1954 he became the first head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Newcastle University, where he remained until his retirement in 1975, apart from a secondment to Heriot-Watt University during its formation of a separate department of chemical engineering.

Coulson married twice, first to Dora with whom he had two sons, Anthony and Simon, and then in 1965 to Christine, who survived him.