Bryan Reuben was one of the UK’s first mass spectrometrists. In 1958 he was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship to Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island where he worked with Dr Lewis Friedman on the kinetics of gas-phase ion-molecule reactions.
Bryan Reuben was born in Bradford in 1934, the only child of a GP. It was in his father’s dispensary that he carried out the early experiments — many of them explosive — which awakened his love of chemistry. He attended Bradford Grammar School and won a scholarship to the Queen’s College, Oxford.
After his DPhil and 16 months at Brookhaven, he returned to England to work for Distillers’ as a physical chemist. After a year he moved to sales development, which awakened a lifelong interest in the relationship between chemistry and economics. Two years later, in 1963, he moved from commerce to academia and Battersea College of Advanced Technology (soon to be the University of Surrey), where he developed a groundbreaking industrial chemistry course. In 1977 he moved to the chemical engineering department at Borough Polytechnic (later London South Bank University), where he was principal lecturer and was responsible for building up research. He became Professor of Chemical Technology in 1990.
He spent a sabbatical year at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, in 1972, where he helped to set up the MSc in applied chemistry and lectured on industrial processes and catalysis. He also acted as a consultant for the Israel Ministry of Development.
In 1979 and 1980 he taught at the Universities of Texas, Oregon, Michigan and Missouri. In 1981 he was visiting professor and consultant at the University of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil.
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Reuben published 13 books and more than 140 papers on the chemical, pharmaceutical and process industries, many becoming standard works in the field. These included The Chemical Economy with Michael L. Burstall (1973) and Industrial Organic Chemicals in Perspective with Harold A. Wittcoff (1980) — he was planning to work on proofs of a new edition of the latter the week before he died.
He retired in 1997, but as is often the case his workload increased. In 2008 he fulfilled a long-standing aim to produce a book for the popular market: Bread — A Slice of History was written with John Marchant and Joan P. Alcock. He appeared as an authority on bread on the BBC Four programme In Search of the Perfect Loaf.
He was also a frequent contributor to the letters pages of The Times and the Jewish Chronicle, writing on a variety of topics including his passionate, but measured, support of Israel (he was a practising Jew). Erudite and witty, he was an excellent public speaker and writer of humorous articles. At Oxford he wrote for several comedy revues.
A keen skier, Reuben suffered a near-fatal accident while skiing with his sons in the French Alps in 1987, sustaining damage to a heart valve. This was replaced by a pig valve, in a pioneering operation. Twelve months later he was back in the Alps, and one of his greatest pleasures in later years was teaching his grandchildren to ski.
A man of great integrity, he hated hypocrisy. He set high standards of accuracy in everything he did, and expected others to do the same.
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Reuben is survived by his wife Catherine Katzenstein, a linguist, whom he married in 1966, and their daughter and two sons.
Bryan Reuben, Professor Emeritus of Chemical Technology at London South Bank University, was born on January 12, 1934. He died on February 25, 2012, aged 78