In Memoriam: Kenneth L. Johnson
Drs. Wilfred T. Tysoe & Nicholas D. Spencer | TLT Cutting Edge February 2016
We mourn the passing of a great tribologist.
Ken Johnson, 1925-2015, Life Member of STLE
IT WAS WITH GREAT SADNESS THAT WE LEARNED OF THE PASSING of professor Ken Johnson, a Life Member of STLE, last September. Professor Johnson was born in Barrow-in-Furness, an industrial town at the southern tip of the Lake District in the north of England, where he attended the local grammar school. His senior school years coincided with World War II when, according to a May 2010 article in the News and Star newspaper, he did his bit by cutting wood for pit props with his scout troop.
He studied mechanical engineering at the University of Manchester, Faculty of Technology, which subsequently became UMIST, and received his bachelor’s of science degree in 1944 and his master’s in 1948. He then went to work with Rotol Airscrews in Gloucestershire, a manufacturer of propellers for Spitfire aircraft. It was there he first became interested in contact problems while studying propeller vibrations. He realized that the damping in structural vibrations occurred principally due to slip at clamped joints.
He returned to Manchester in 1949 as an assistant lecturer in engineering and earned his doctorate there in 1954 with a thesis titled The Effects of an Oscillating Force at the Interface of Bodies in Contact, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (A230, 531 (1955)).
Like many of the greatest minds from Manchester, he was lured to the glitter and prestige of Cambridge where he became a demonstrator in engineering in 1954. He remained at Cambridge for the rest of his career, being appointed a Fellow of Jesus College in 1957 and professor of engineering in 1977.
Professor Johnson, in spite of his intellectual stature, was extremely modest and generous. He invariably gave away his engineering department research funds to others that he felt were in greater need. He had a self-effacing, northern sense of humor as illustrated by his acceptance speech for the Timoshenko Medal. He recounts how drawing vectors for the five-bladed Spitfire propeller was invaluable training for dividing a cake or a pie equitably for a family of five.
He joked that his name was so common that, during a visit to a colleague at Harvard, he had the following conversation:
“Did you write that book on vibration with Bishop?”
“No, that was Dan Johnson.”
“Did you edit that British Journal of Mechanical Sciences?”
“No, that was Bill Johnson.”
“Then who the hell are you?”
Professor Johnson is perhaps best known for his book Contact Mechanics, which is mandatory reading for any tribologist and, according to Google Scholar, has been cited 14,600 times. His contributions to tribology are remarkable for their breadth and elegance in many areas, including contact mechanics, lubrication, rheology and the wheel-rail contact. His work on the contact of windscreen wipers (Surface Energy and the Contact of Elastic Solids) produced the ‘JKR’ theory of adhesion that remains the basis for understanding nanotribology.
Professor Johnson’s attainments are reflected in the plethora of awards that he received, including his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society, the William Prager, Royal Society, Timoshenko and Tribology Gold Medals and the ASME Mayo D. Hersey Award.
He was always a strong supporter of Tribology Letters. When invited to join the editorial board of the newly founded journal at a meeting in Perth organized by Gwidon Stachowiak, he questioned the need for yet another tribology journal. When we explained that our goal was to focus on the science of tribology, he eagerly agreed and remained a strong supporter of the journal ever after.
His wisdom and his council will be sorely missed.
Eddy Tysoe is a Distinguished Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. You can reach him at wtt@uwm.edu.
Nic Spencer is professor of surface science and technology at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. You can reach him at nspencer@ethz.ch.
Both serve as editors-in-chief of STLE-affiliated Tribology Letters journal.