John Newman (scientist)
John Scott Newman (b. 17 Nov 1938) is a retired professor of the University of California and renowned battery researcher. The university's Department of Chemical Engineering's Newman Research Group was founded by Newman and "interests of this research group include the investigation of efficient and economical methods for electrochemical energy conversion and storage, development of mathematical models to predict the behavior of electrochemical systems and to identify important process parameters, and experimental verification of the completeness and accuracy of the models".[1] Newman also worked for the Electrochemical Technologies Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory[2] where he was a Faculty Senior Scientist.[3] He served as director of the Department of Energy’s Batteries for Advanced Transportation Technologies Program.[4] He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1999 and was an Onsager Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 2002.[4] Venkat Srinivasan has called Newman "the father of electrochemical engineering."[5]
A "numerical technique...developed for solving coupled electrochemical reaction–diffusion equations"[6] by Newman is now known as The Newman Method.[4]
He is the author of Electrochemical Systems with Karen E. Thomas-Alyea which is "used throughout the world as a monograph and graduate text in electrochemical engineering."[4]
In 2010 he received the Edward Goodrich Acheson Award of the Electrochemical Society, his tenth award from the society.[4]