A. Blaine Bowman

A. Blaine Bowman
Pittcon Heritage Award recipient, 2015
Born	1946 Ogden, Utah, USA
Nationality	United States
Alma mater	Brigham Young University, Stanford University
Scientific career
Fields	Ion chromatography
Institutions	Dionex Corporation

Arthur 'Blaine' Bowman (born 1946 in Ogden, Utah, USA) is a leading proponent of ion chromatography, who has served variously as Chairman, President, Chief Executive Officer, and Director of Dionex Corporation, a manufacturer of analytical instruments. Bowman received the 2015 Pittcon Heritage Award in recognition of his contributions to the field of ion chromatography.

Arthur 'Blaine' Bowman was born in 1946 in Ogden, Utah, USA. Around age 10, his family moved to Southern California, where he grew up. Bowman attended Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah in the physics program. As an undergraduate, he worked in the summer as an engineer at McDonnell Douglas, testing modules for the Apollo rocket. Bowman received his B.S. in Physics in 1970.

Next, Bowman worked as a product engineer at Motorola's Semiconductor Products Division in Phoenix, Arizona, where he became interested in business. He attended Stanford University's School of Business from 1971 to 1973, receiving his M.B.A. in 1973. He then joined McKinsey & Company as a management consultant.

In 1977, Bowman joined International Plasma Corporation of Hayward, California as chief financial officer and general manager of its analytical instrument division. International Plasma Corporation owned Durrum Instrument Corporation, an instrumentation company that had purchased exclusive rights to an emergent technology, Ion chromatography, from Dow Chemical Company. Initial research by Hamish Small and others at the Dow Physical Research Laboratory in Midland, Michigan suggested that inorganic ion analysis would be superior to commonly-used wet chemical techniques, but Dow was not interested in pursuing the idea.