OBITUARY

Owen Potter died on 22/06/2020.

Emeritus Professor Owen Edward Potter AM FTSE was a seminal figure in chemical engineering in Australia and internationally.

An original and remarkable thinker, he invented a process to dry particulate solid materials, alumina and brown coal which not only reduced emissions at power stations by 20 percent but also decreased operating costs. The invention was patented in 1981 and won him numerous awards and accolades.

Owen Potter was born in Brisbane in 1925 and on leaving school won a scholarship to study science at the University of Queensland where he graduated with first-class honours in chemical engineering. He spent the next two years working as a researcher on a training scholarship from CSIRO while studying for his master’s degree in applied sciences.

In 1949 he was awarded another scholarship to study a second master’s degree in history and philosophy of science at the University of London. A teaching post at the University of Manchester followed and he used the time to complete a PhD by research in chemical engineering.

Professor Potter returned to Australia in 1960 as a reader in chemical engineering at the University of Melbourne and soon after concurrently took on the role of head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at RMIT. He began a 26-year tenure at Monash University as the foundation professor of chemical engineering in 1964.

He continued to apply his mind well into his 90s, setting up and chairing a family- directed company, OEP Cross-Flow, whose mission was to commercialise globally the patents for his invention of a gas particle cross-flow contactor.

Professor Potter’s wife Julia died in 2010. He is survived by seven of their eight children.