John Robert Anderson 1928–2007

Abstract

John Anderson was born in Sydney on 5 March 1928 and died in Melbourne on 26 February 2007. He was educated at Sydney Boys' High School, Sydney Technical College, the New South Wales University of Technology (now the University of New South Wales) and the University of Cambridge. He was at Queens University Belfast as a Ramsay Memorial Fellow, 1954–5, was a Lecturer in Chemistry at the New South Wales University of Technology, a Reader in Chemistry at the University of Melbourne and Foundation Professor of Chemistry at Flinders University in South Australia. In 1969 he was appointed Chief of the CSIRO Division of Tribophysics and managed the Division's transition to become the Division of Materials Science. He was a Professor of Chemistry at Monash University, Melbourne, from 1987 until his retirement in 1993. He will be remembered for his contributions to the understanding of gas–solid interactions with particular emphasis on fundamental heterogeneous catalysis on metals, but also embracing other adsorption and oxidation processes.