John Gleaves, a professor emeritus at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, died Monday, June 2, 2025. He was 79.
Gleaves was a member of the chemical engineering faculty from 1988-2022. His research focused on heterogeneous catalysis.
Gleaves was co-inventor of the Temporal Analysis of Products (TAP) reactor system, which he began while working at Monsanto Co. He received a U.S. patent in 1986. He created Mithra Technologies in 1992, a private company building many of the TAP reactors in use today.
“He shared with his students the wonderment and awe for science,” said Gregory Yablonski, an adjunct professor who co-directed the Heterogeneous Kinetics and Particle Chemistry Laboratory at WashU with Gleaves. “He made science fun and was known for his great stories.”
Gleaves earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Louisville in 1968 and master’s and doctoral degrees in physical chemistry from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1972 and 1975, respectively.
Gleaves is survived by his three children, John, Chris and Cara Gleaves, and other extended family.
Read the full obituary on the McKelvey Engineering website.