It is with the great sadness that
we have learnt of the sudden death on 14th January 2014 of the eminent fire
scientist, Professor Philip Humphrey Thomas, aged 87.
Philip graduated with First Class
Honours in Mechanical Engineering from Cambridge University in 1945 obtaining in
1950 a PhD from research on Rubbing Solids in the Physical Chemistry
Department. After a year as a special research trainee at the Metropolitan
Vickers Company in Manchester he joined the Fire Research Station (FRS) in
1951.
He was promoted rapidly to
Principal Scientific Officer by the age of 30 and awarded Special Merit Senior
Principal Scientific Officer status in 1962. He started his work in the section
at FRS concerned with extinction of fires, later to become its head studying
the ignition and growth of fire, examining the use of models, flame behaviour
and roof venting. A paper published in 1963 describing the venting of smoke
from pre-flashover fires was the predecessor of current two zone smoke models.
In 1966 he spent a one year
sabbatical at the Building Research Institute of Japan developing very close
link with that country and was also, later, Visiting Professor at the
University of California, Berkeley in 1980, the Science University of Tokyo, 1982,
the Technical University of Denmark in 1987 and the University of Lund, Sweden
from 1984 to 1990.
Throughout
his career at the Fire Research Station from 1951 to 1986 he published much of
the key seminal research that has provided us with our scientific understanding
of fire. Ranging through contributions on self-heating, thermal explosion
theory, through fire extinction and buoyant diffusion flame theory to the
modelling of forest and building fires, his name is dominant in author citation
indexes in the field.
During his
time as Springer Professor at Berkeley in 1980 a Symposium was held in his
honour. To celebrate his retirement from FRS, the UK Building Research Station
published a special collection of some of his papers. He continued to contribute
well after his retirement from FRS and was still publishing scientific papers as
late as 2010.
In addition
to his research, Philip was Co-ordinator
of the Fire Commission of the Conseil International du Batiment (CIB W14) from
1974-1994 and Chairman of the International Organisation for Standardisation
Fire Safety Committee ISO TC92 from 1976 to 1995.
He was the founding father of the
International Association for Fire Safety Science. It was he, along with
like-minded researchers from across the world, who made the first moves in 1983
to establish a new international association for fire researchers. They had
recognised that, whilst there were several organisations then in existence that
embraced some special aspects of fire there was no single institution that covered
the full diversity of topics that constituted fire safety science.
Phil drove the initiative forward,
establishing it at the very successful First International Symposium on Fire
Safety Science hosted in the US in 1985 by NIST (then the National Bureau of
Standards). At that Symposium he was elected the Association’s first Chairman
and served in that capacity from 1985 to 1991.
At that time the world was far
more fragmented than it is now but Phil’s rigorous commitment to
internationalism ensured the enduring success of the Association.
He took the lead from the
Combustion Institute and the Royal Society in seeking to establish charitable
status for the IAFSS which was achieved in 1988.
He was
particularly animated about the need for high standards in fire research and it
is particularly fitting that the
IAFSS now names its award for best paper at its Symposia as the Philip Thomas
award.
Phil will be
sadly missed by many friends and colleagues from across the world not only for
his unique contribution to our field but for his warmth, wisdom and his analytical
insight.
by Geoff Cox
