Keith E. Gubbins

Keith E. Gubbins
Residence	Raleigh, NC
Nationality	American
Fields	Chemical engineering
Institutions	North Carolina State University University of Florida
Alma mater	King's College London
Doctoral advisor	Keith E. Gubbins
Known for	Thermodynamics
Notable awards	Joel Henry Hildebrand Award in the Theoretical and Experimental Study of Liquids, American Chemical Society, 2007; The Lennard–Jones Lectureship and Prize, 2013

Keith E. Gubbins (born 27 January 1937) is a British born American chemical engineer who is the W.H. Clark Distinguished University Professor of Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering in the chemistry section.

Keith E. Gubbins was born in Southampton, England, and spent most of his childhood there. He began his academic training at Queen Mary College in the University of London, where he received his BSc in Chemistry with First Class honours in 1958. He went on to receive his PhD degree in Chemical Engineering from King's College at the University of London in 1962. The topic of his doctoral research, which was largely experimental, was the kinetics of reactions in fluidised beds. He then joined the University of Florida in Gainesville as a postdoctoral fellow to work on the mass transport of gases in fuel cells with Robert D. Walker. In 1964 he became an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Florida, and then moved rapidly through the ranks to become a full professor in 1972. On joining the Florida faculty, he was asked to teach thermodynamics, and this led to his interest in statistical mechanics of fluids. Much of his early interest in statistical mechanics was focused on the diffusion and solubility of gases in electrolyte solutions. While at University of Florida he co-authored, with the late Tim Reed, Applied Statistical Mechanics (McGraw-Hill, 1973), the first such text aimed at practical applications to fluids, with a particular orientation towards chemical engineering. In 1973 very few chemical engineers were aware of the potential of statistical mechanics in their field. It was also during his time at Florida that he began a long and very productive collaboration with Chris Gray and Peter Egelstaff at the University of Guelph in Canada. This began as a result of a sabbatical leave spent with Egelstaff, the leading expert in neutron scattering from liquids, a topic Keith was eager to become familiar with.

In 1976 he moved to Cornell University as the Thomas R. Briggs Professor of Engineering, where he spent the next 22 years, serving 7 years as Director of the School of Chemical Engineering there (1983–1990). At Cornell he was a member of the Graduate Fields of Chemistry, Applied Physics, Applied Mathematics and History of Science, in addition to Engineering. During his period as Director he led a successful effort to raise funds for a renovation of all of the teaching and research laboratories, and was responsible for hiring seven new faculty members. While at Cornell, Keith established a style of conducting research that has become synonymous with him. Using the resources of Cornell and those of various funding agencies he built a vibrant international collaborative laboratory in statistical mechanics and molecular modelling, to which he welcomed many international visiting scientists. It was while at Cornell that he teamed up with a fellow faculty member, William ('Bill') B. Streett, an internationally renowned expert in high-pressure phase equilibria and molecular simulation of fluids. It was from Bill that he learned about the potential of molecular simulation methods. Together they formed a successful joint program involving experimental and theoretical studies of liquid mixtures.

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