William Wakeham

Sir William Arnot Wakeham FREng (born 25 September 1944) is a British chemical engineer. From 2001 to 2009 he was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton.

Wakeham received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in physics at Exeter University.

He served as a Research Associate at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1971 appointed lecturer in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemical Technology at Imperial College, London. He was successively Reader in 1979, Professor of Chemical Physics in 1985, and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering in 1988.

His academic specialty is thermodynamics, particularly the thermophysical properties of fluids and intermolecular forces.

In 1996 he was appointed Pro-Rector (Research) and subsequently also Deputy Rector and Pro-Rector (Resources) at Imperial College, holding these positions simultaneously, and overseeing the college's medical school formation in 1997 from the merger of St Mary's Hospital Medical School, Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School (formerly Charing Cross Hospital Medical School and Westminster Hospital Medical School), the Royal Postgraduate Medical School and the National Heart and Lung Institute.

In 2007 the then Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, Rt. Hon. John Denham MP invited him to chair a review of UK physics which reported in October 2008.

...
Wikipedia