John Francis Brady (born January 8, 1954) is an American

chemical engineer In the field of engineering, a chemical engineer is a professional, equipped with the knowledge of chemical engineering, who works principally in the chemical industry to convert basic raw materials into a variety of products and deals with the ...

and the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He is a fluid mechanician and creator of the

Stokesian dynamics Stokesian dynamics is a solution technique for the Langevin equation, which is the relevant form of Newton's 2nd law for a Brownian particle. The method treats the suspended particles in a discrete sense while the continuum approximation remains va ...

method for simulating suspensions of spheres and ellipsoids in low Reynolds number flows. He is an elected fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

, a fellow of the

Society of Rheology The Society of Rheology is an American professional society formed in December, 1929 to represent scientists and technologists working in the field of rheology, the science of the deformation and flow of matter. Current membership is of the order ...

, as well as a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Education and career

Brady was educated in chemical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania (B.S. 1975), the University of Cambridge, England (Certificate of Postgraduate Study, 1976), and

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

(M.S. 1977 and Ph.D. 1981). He completed his dissertation entitled Inertial effects in closed cavity flows and their influence in drop breakup advised by Professor Andreas Acrivos. Following his Ph.D., Brady was a NATO post-doctoral fellow at the Ecole Superiéure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles, Paris, France (1980–81). Following his research in France, Brady joined the faculty in chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an assistant professor in 1981. He moved in 1985 to the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology, which has been his academic home since. In 1999, Brady was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for his work in elucidating the basic mechanics of and developing methods for the simulation of multiphase flows.

Research contributions

Brady is an expert in the theory and simulations of fluid mechanics, rheology, and transport phenomena. He has made significant research contributions in the understanding of

active matter Active matter is matter composed of large numbers of active "agents", each of which consumes energy in order to move or to exert mechanical forces. Such systems are intrinsically out of thermal equilibrium. Unlike thermal systems relaxing toward ...

and

suspensions In chemistry, a suspension is a heterogeneous mixture of a fluid that contains solid particles sufficiently large for sedimentation. The particles may be visible to the naked eye, usually must be larger than one micrometer, and will eventually ...

. Among his many accomplishments is the creation of

with Georges Bossis. The

method allows the accurate and rapid simulation of the dynamics and rheology of suspensions of spherical particles at low

Reynolds number In fluid mechanics, the Reynolds number () is a dimensionless quantity that helps predict fluid flow patterns in different situations by measuring the ratio between inertial and viscous forces. At low Reynolds numbers, flows tend to be domi ...

. The technique has been used by researchers world-wide to model suspensions and understand a variety of physical systems. Brady and collaborators discovered the micromechanical "swim pressure" that contributes to the unique self-assembly and phase separation in a broad class of active matter. Brady was an associate editor of the '' Journal of Fluid Mechanics'' (1990-2004) and the editor of the ''

Journal of Rheology ''Journal of Rheology'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal publishing original (primary) research on all aspects of rheology, the study of those properties of materials which determine their response to mechanical force. It is published bi-mo ...

'' (2005-2012). According to Google Scholar, his publications have received over 19,000 citations and his h-index is 68.

Awards and honors

He has received numerous awards and honors which include: * Election to the

(2020) * Fellow of the

(2015) * American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2014) *

Fluid Dynamics Prize (APS) The Fluid Dynamics Prize is a prize that has been awarded annually by the American Physical Society (APS) since 1979. The recipient is chosen for "outstanding achievement in fluid dynamics research". The prize is currently valued at . In 2004, the ...

(2011) *

Bingham Medal The Bingham Medal is an annual award for outstanding contributions to the field of rheology awarded at the Annual Meeting of The Society of Rheology. It was instituted in 1948 by the society to commemorate Eugene C. Bingham (1878–1945). List o ...

(2007) * Election to the National Academy of Engineering (1999) * Professional Progress Award,

AIChE The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) is a professional organization for chemical engineers. AIChE was actually established in 1908 to distinguish chemical engineers as a profession independent of chemists and mechanical engineers ...

(1998) * Fellow of the

(1994) * ASEE

Curtis W. McGraw Research Award Curtis or Curtiss is a common English given name and surname of Anglo-Norman origin from the Old French ''curteis'' (Modern French ''courtois'') which derived from the Spanish Cortés (of which Cortez is a variation) and the Portuguese and Gal ...

(1993) * Joliot-Curie Professor, ESPCI Paris, France (1988), (1996) * Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (1986) *

Presidential Young Investigator Award The Presidential Young Investigator Award (PYI) was awarded by the National Science Foundation of the United States Federal Government. The program operated from 1984 to 1991, and was replaced by the NSF Young Investigator (NYI) Awards and Presiden ...

, National Science Foundation (1985)

Selected publications

* * * * * *

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Brady, John F. Living people 1954 births California Institute of Technology faculty University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni Alumni of the University of Cambridge MIT School of Engineering faculty Stanford University School of Engineering alumni American chemical engineers Fluid mechanics Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences