John Dewing BSc PhD CChem FRSC

Dr John Dewing, a longtime member of this society, passed away in his sleep at the age of 96 in Chirk, Wrexham on 4 December 2025.

John was a physical chemist with particular interest in the chemistry of Zeolites and their use in catalysis. John was born at Saffron Walden in Essex and educated at Newport Grammar School. After completion of National Service in the Royal Navy, John studied Chemistry at Kings College in London. He went on to complete a PhD also at King’s entitled “The Lifetime of Adsorbed Molecules “.

Having married a fellow student Barbara Redgwick in 1954, they moved overseas when John continued his research with a two year post-doctoral fellowship at the National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada, during which time his daughter was born. On completion of his post doc, John joined Imperial Chemical Industries research laboratories, initially at Billingham on Teesside and later at Runcorn in Cheshire.

In 1950s post war Britain laboratory glassware was almost unavailable. All the necessary research equipment had to be manufactured by the students on site. As a result of this experience, he and a number of fellow doctoral candidates wrote and published a book, "Laboratory glass-working for Scientists ROBERTSON, FABIAN, CROCKER and DEWING, Butterworth, 1957".

John spent his working life at ICI within the research organization, choosing to remain in technical roles. He was well known on the conference circuit and authored many patents and papers. Towards the end of his career at ICI, John took on a 2 year exchange with ICI America in Wilmington Delaware.

Following his retirement, John was appointed Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Chemistry at UMIST. Here he was instrumental in the formation of the UMIST Centre for Microporous Materials (CMM), in conjunction with his long time friend and collaborator the late Professor John Dwyer (1928 -2018). He also supervised a number of PhD students.

He was a quiet and unassuming family man with an extremely dry sense of humour. Outside of research and academia, John had a wide and eclectic range of interests, from baroque organ music to sailing. He and his wife travelled extensively in later years and was an elder at the United Reformed Church in Hoole Chester.

John was predeceased in 2021 by his wife and survived by a daughter Karin, sons Simon & Nigel, 11 grandchildren, 12 great grandchildren and his brother Ernest, also a chemist, who lives in Canada.