It is with great regret that we announce the passing of Thomas F. Anderson, Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering. Tom passed away on July 19, 2026, at the age of 79. Tom earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Iowa State University in 1968. He then served in the United States Navy from 1969 to 1974 as a P-3 Orion patrol aircraft pilot and commander, leaving the service as a lieutenant. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1978, working with John Prausnitz on the application of the UNIQUAC equation to multicomponent phase equilibria. That work, together with the 1980 monograph Computer Calculations for Multicomponent Vapor-Liquid and Liquid-Liquid Equilibria that he co-authored, became a standard reference for engineers designing separation processes.

Tom served on the faculty of the University of Connecticut for more than thirty years. He led the Department of Chemical Engineering as Head, and he later served as Associate Dean of the School of Engineering. He also held a visiting professorship at the Norwegian Technical University in Trondheim. In addition, in 2002 he co-founded the extremely successful company, Academic Keys, a Storrs-based company that now carries higher education postings from more than two thousand institutions.

Colleagues and students knew him as a patient teacher and a generous mentor. He was truly a scholar and a gentleman who always had time for his students and his colleagues. He never failed to make himself available to help out the Department. Even after he retired, he found ways to give back, whether by stepping in to teach graduate-level thermodynamics or by serving on various committees. Tom represented the best in all of us and in what we aspire to become. He will be sorely missed.

---