John Anthony Llewellyn (22 April 1933 – 2 July 2013), was a Welsh-born American

scientist A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosoph ...

and a former

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

astronaut candidate.

Biography

Llewellyn was born 22 April 1933, in Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom, and graduated from

Cardiff High School Cardiff High School ( cy, Ysgol Uwchradd Caerdydd) is a comprehensive school in the Cyncoed area of Cardiff, Wales. Stephen Jones has been Headteacher since 2011. It has been rated as Excellent for current performance and Excellent for prospect ...

in 1949. He received his

BSc A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...

degree from

University College, Cardiff , latin_name = , image_name = Shield of the University of Cardiff.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms of Cardiff University , motto = cy, Gwirionedd, Undod a Chytgord , mottoeng = Truth, Unity and Concord , established = 1 ...

in 1955 and went on to achieve his PhD degree in chemistry in 1958. He married Valerie Mya Davies-Jones, and they had three children.

Post-education

After the award of his doctorate, Llewellyn moved to

Ottawa, Ontario Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...

, Canada and served as a post-doctoral fellow at the

National Research Council National Research Council may refer to: * National Research Council (Canada), sponsoring research and development * National Research Council (Italy), scientific and technological research, Rome * National Research Council (United States), part of ...

. In 1960, he went to Florida State University as a research associate in the Chemistry Department and was subsequently appointed Assistant

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

. In 1964, he was jointly appointed associate professor in both the School of Engineering Science and the Department of Chemistry.

Diving

Having been taught to dive by aquanaut Jacques Cousteau, Llewellyn served as training director for Florida State University's diver training program. This was one of the first

scuba diving Scuba diving is a mode of underwater diving whereby divers use breathing equipment that is completely independent of a surface air supply. The name "scuba", an acronym for " Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus", was coined by Chr ...

certification programs in the United States. Among those he certified was sixteen year old E. Lee Spence, who received his certification on 10 July 1964. Spence went on to become one of the pioneers of

underwater archaeology Underwater archaeology is archaeology practiced underwater. As with all other branches of archaeology, it evolved from its roots in pre-history and in the classical era to include sites from the historical and industrial eras. Its acceptance has ...

. Llewellyn's diving gave him experience in the feeling of weightlessness, which helped prepare him for his later training as an astronaut.

NASA selection

Llewellyn was selected as a scientist-astronaut by

in August 1967. He participated in flight training as part of

NASA Astronaut Group 6 NASA Astronaut Group 6 (the "XS-11", "Excess Eleven") was a group of eleven astronauts announced by NASA on August 11, 1967, the second group of scientist-astronauts. Although Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton planned to hire 20 ...

; however, he dropped out of flight school and resigned from NASA in September 1968. Llewellyn needed to learn to fly jets, and was not able to fly the jet with the cockpit blacked out.

Post-NASA experience

While with the

University of South Florida The University of South Florida (USF) is a public research university with its main campus located in Tampa, Florida, and other campuses in St. Petersburg and Sarasota. It is one of 12 members of the State University System of Florida. USF i ...

's Department of Chemical Engineering, Llewellyn also served as Director of the College of Engineering's computing department, and later as University Director of Academic Computing, where he helped initiate USF's programs in

High-Performance Computing High-performance computing (HPC) uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Overview HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into a mult ...

and electronic and distance learning. In 2007, he retired from the directorship position and served as Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering until his death. His research interests included the development of impedance-based sensor measurement methods and instrumentation for invivo monitoring of tissue after the application of an electric field mediated plasmid delivery protocol (IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation 16(5): 1348–1355. His current work was presented at the 2010 American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy and he was an invited session leader at the 2010 Gordon Conference in Bioelectrochemistry.

Death

Llewellyn died on 2 July 2013 after suffering a stroke.