Kevin Kendall FRS is a British physicist who received a London external BSc degree at Salford CAT in 1965 while working as an engineering apprentice at Joseph Lucas Gas Turbine Ltd.
He became interested in surface science during his Ph.D. study in the Cavendish Laboratory and devised a novel method for measuring the true contact area between solids using an ultrasonic transmission.
Roberts had performed experiments on the contact and surface attraction of optically smooth rubber spheres during his doctoral studies, while Johnson had solved the stress field problem twelve years earlier.
[14] Unfortunately, misapprehensions, errors, and anachronisms in science last for centuries and there has been little change in engineering courses and ASTM standards in this millennium to make necessary adjustments in faulty fracture text-books, as recounted in recent conferences[15] that demonstrated 'strength of brittle materials' always varies with the size of the samples being tested and so has little meaning, overriding Galileo's original definition from 1638.
[26] The patents on ceramic processing were used to develop new products, especially Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) that are expected to grow in market size to $1.4 bn by 2025.
[27] Kendall's invention of fine cell tubes allowed rapid start-up and led to many academic papers and two books that were highly cited.
[31] He and his colleagues, Prof. Dr. Bruno Georges Pollet and Dr Waldemar Bujalski opened the first UK green-hydrogen station refueling five fuel-cell-battery-taxis in 2008[23][32][30][33] and has continued since his retiring from teaching in 2011 to encourage city/industry leadership in clean-energy transport, not achievable by academics, linking with Asia where the growing car population nearing 1 billion is a desperate problem.
[37][30] He continues to push forward the green hydrogen revolution, running a fleet of hydrogen-fuel-cell battery vehicles in the Birmingham Clean Air Zone.