Rolf Prince and His Work, Particularly Research into Distillation Technology

This work will discuss the outstanding research contributions of Emeritus Professor Rolf Prince AO, who passed away in Sydney aged 88, his remarkable personal story as a refugee saved from Nazi Germany and his outstanding professional career, recognised globally for his contribution to chemical engineering. Awarded the Order of Australia in 1997, he kept working at the University of Sydney for the next twenty years, stopped by illness only a few months before his death. Many have commented on his energy, and his frenetic pace only seemed to increase in his ‘retirement’. His contributions to distillation technology, and particularly to sieve plate development and bio-distillation, will be reviewed in more detail in this paper.