John Metcalfe Coulson (13 December 1910 – 6 January 1990)[1] was a British chemical engineering academic particularly known for co-writing a textbook on chemical engineering with Jack Richardson (published in 1954), which became an established series of texts now known as Coulson & Richardson's Chemical Engineering.
Their father was Alfred Coulson (who became Principal of Dudley Technical College) and their mother was Annie Sincere Hancock, a school headmistress.
In 1954 he became the first head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Newcastle University, where he remained until his retirement in 1975, apart from a secondment to Heriot-Watt University during its formation of a separate department of chemical engineering.
[1] Coulson married twice, first to Dora (died 1961) with whom he had two sons, Anthony and Simon, and then in 1965 to Christine, who survived him.
[1] He was awarded the George E. Davis Medal of the Institution of Chemical Engineers in 1973,[1] and he received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in the same year.