Ronald G. Larson

Ronald G. Larson is George G. Brown Professor of Chemical Engineering and Alfred H. White Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan, where he holds joint appointments in macromolecular science and engineering, biomedical engineering, and mechanical engineering. He is internationally recognized for his research contributions to the fields of polymer physics and complex fluid rheology, especially in the development of theory and computational simulations. Notably, Larson and collaborators discovered new types of viscoelastic instabilities for polymer molecules and developed predictive theories for their flow behavior. He has written numerous scientific papers and two books on these subjects, including a 1998 textbook, “The Structure and Rheology of Complex Fluids”.

He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Bingham medalist and the Society of Rheology. He was also elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (2003) for elucidating the flow properties of complex fluids at the molecular and continuum levels through theory and experiment.