In Memoriam: John Villadsen (1936-2021)

Renowned chemical engineer and Professor, PhD, dr.tehn., dr.h.c. mult. John Villads Villadsen died on July 22, 2021, at age 85. John felt unconscious while analysing a game of chess, and later that day an extraordinary life ended peacefully. This was the way John wanted to go, remembered as a person with his full intellectual capabilities to the very end.

John was a brilliant chemical and biochemical engineer with a long curriculum of merits, but his enormous intelligence and talents also reached beyond the field of engineering. He was fluent in several languages, historian, world-traveller, and not least a visionary leader that developed and advanced the field of chemical and biochemical engineering in Denmark and abroad.

I was a chemical engineering student at the Technical University of Denmark when I first met John. He was an inspiring storyteller and convinced me about why and how chemical engineering should play a role in biotechnology. John did not only teach the principles of engineering, he was known for having strong opinions about what were good ideas, and certainly also on ‘irrelevant ideas without any hope’! His arguments were backed by a strong quantitative approach, industrially relevant examples and numerous exercises that often were hard to solve. There were many eye-openers. As John said, you do not learn by solving standard problems. I got the point!

John established Center for Process Biotechnology, later renamed to Center for Microbial Biotechnology, and I was very fortunate to do my gradate studies at this vibrant centre with Professor Jens Nielsen as advisor and John as co-advisor. In 2005 I graduated, John was approaching the age of 70 and a few years back he had successfully completed his succession plan with Jens Nielsen as leader of the centre. One would think that it was a good time to retire. The answer was a crystal clear ‘no’!

In the next 15 years after ‘retirement’ John was instrumental in establishing new activities at the Department of Chemical Engineering (Kemiteknik) at the Technical University of Denmark and at the University of Trinidad & Tobago in the Caribbean. Furthermore, he took the time to write articles, revise his classical textbook on bioreaction engineering principles and teach courses in several countries including Australia, Chile, Iran, South Africa, Thailand, etc. I once assisted John on a course in Thailand where the nice host politely introduced John based on his long CV. After a while John seemed a bit restless and afterwards the host asked me whether John was irritated or even angry. Not at all, I answered. He just wants to teach, and we were already halfway into module one! John wanted to make sure that the students had sufficient time to learn, the course was not about him.

The textbook, Bioreaction Engineering Principles, has become a classical textbook in biochemical engineering. The book was co-authored with Jens Nielsen and Gunnar Lidén. In 2015 John published his last textbook, Fundamental Bioengineering, where he wrote seven chapters himself.

The time as graduate student also meant that I had a chance to get to know John better and beyond the daily work at the institute. John appreciated good food and wine, and it was always exciting to be invited to the house of John and his nice wife Kirsten in northern Zealand. John could tell numerous stories from his childhood in Copenhagen during World War II to what it takes to sell spray draying equipment in South America and convince Danish politicians to take action. John was a true academic but there was a lot more to add.

John is not here anymore but his legacy will stay for a long time. We are many who own him a lot for his contribution to engineering and not least our own development. These days my thoughts go to Kirsten and the entire family.

Links

Professor Jens Nielsen, CEO of the BioInnovation Institute, and Professor Kim Dam-Johansen, Director of the Department of Chemical Engineering, have both written two fine obituaries posted on the website of the Technical University of Denmark.

In 2015, the largest manufacturer of industrial enzymes, Novozymes, awarded John a special price for his contribution to biochemical and chemical engineering in a very personal ceremony. The seminar had attendance from senior management of Novozymes as well as many guests.

John was a chemical engineer with a very strong mathematical mindset throughout his career. Already in 1967, he developed a numerical approach called orthogonal collocation to solve some types of partial differential equations often encountered in chemical engineering. The methods were extended and refined with co-worker Michael L. Michelsen, see review by Young (2018).