Joe’s education as an electronic engineer included the University of Nottingham and MIT, and in 1959 he started work in the gas detection industry, working closely with Verne Brown to build Enmet, a company supplying medical and industrial gas monitoring equipment. Joe was a Lecturer (later, Senior Lecturer) at Swansea University from 1964 and was a Visiting Professor at the University of Calgary and the Universities of California Davis and Santa Barbara.
He consulted with Figaro and co-authored and edited books on aviation and electronics, including “The Stannic Oxide Gas Sensor, Principles and Applications”.
In due course we will issue a special GASG newsletter to celebrate Joe’s life, including Members’ personal tributes and stories. Please send contributions to [email protected].
Attendees also benefitted from the insights provided by Prof Norman Ratcliffe (University of the West of England) who gave a highly entertaining plenary talk entitled ‘The Smell of Disease’, drawing on his long career in the field of gas detection for medical diagnosis.
Jane focussed on the significant and highly relevant activities in gas, VOC and particulate sensing which GASG promotes through our meetings and publications. It was emphasised that mainstream gas sensing has long supported the petrochemical sector, having grown with the rise of fossil fuel extraction and use. The sensing industry is now an important driver, monitor and enabler of the path to net zero. The need to dramatically reduce emissions is widely accepted, but some leakage is inevitable and the various risks associated with a wide range of gases must still be mitigated. This is driving significant increases in sensor deployment (and lowering of costs), improvements in limits of detection and growth in emissions measurement applications across all sectors, not just oil & gas. Even in a fully electrified world, there will still be many applications for gas and particle sensors!
