Funeral mass will be LiveStreamed at: https://venue.streamspot.com/event/Njg5MDg4NA==

Brian Anthony Pethica

London, England, 9 July 1926

Princeton, New Jersey USA, 11 July 2026

Brian Pethica was born on 9 July 1926 in East Ham, London, one of eight children of Albert and Elizabeth Pethica. He worked for two years in the laboratory of the South Metropolitan Gas Works while attending evening class studies at West Ham Municipal College, earning 1st class honors B.Sc. as an external student of London University. He then completed a Ph.D. thesis at Imperial College on the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen by azotobacter in 1950.  During this time, he was for two years the National President of the Union of Catholic Students of Great Britain.

In 1953, he completed a second Ph.D. at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge, writing a doctoral thesis on the thermodynamics of interactions in monolayers and correlation with hemolysis by surfactants.  At Cambridge, he taught in the Department of Colloid Science until 1958, and then lectured in Physical Chemistry at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) until 1963.  Thereafter his long career combined academic and industrial science. He worked in the Unilever Research Laboratory at Port Sunlight, where he was first the manager of Chemical Physics and then the Head of Laboratory from 1965 to 1975. He moved to the United States in 1976 and served as Dean of Arts and Sciences and then Professor of Chemistry at Clarkson University. In 1983, he became corporate vice president of Electrobiology, Inc. Pethica was named Senior Research Scientist at Columbia University in 1991, followed by an appointment as Senior Scientist in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University from 1998 until his death.

Brian Pethica was the author and co-author of around 200 scientific publications, over nine different decades, from 1949 to 2025. On 9 July 2026, many of his former colleagues, collaborators, and former graduate students—now distinguished scientists and emeritus professors themselves—from around the world gathered in Princeton to celebrate him and honor his work and life. The Pethica family is very grateful for their kindness.

In 1952 he married Mary Teresa Browne, and they had four sons: John, Damian, Paul, and James. Their marriage ended in divorce. In 1978, he married Giulia Barberi, and they had one son, Milton. Brian Pethica is survived by Giulia; by John (Pam) of Oxford, UK; Damian of Auckland, NZ; Paul (Kate) of Winchester, UK; James (Anne Margaret) of Williamstown, MA; Milton (Allie) of Boulder, CO; thirteen grandchildren, and thirteen great-grandchildren. Science was a lifelong focus for him, along with philosophy and literature—he was a constant reader of Aristotle, Aquinas, and poetry in Latin and English. He was a keen hiker and rock climber.

A funeral mass for Brian Anthony Pethica will be held at St. Paul's Catholic Church, Nassau Street, Princeton, at 10am on Monday, July 20th.  Arrangements will be made for annual scholarships in his name, and donations to these would be welcome.