John Texter is an American engineer, chemist, and educator, and is professor of polymer and coating technology at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He is best known for his work in applied dispersion technology and small particle science, for his international conference organization activities, including Particles 2001, Particles 2002, etc., and the Gordon Research Conferences, Chemistry at Interfaces and Chemistry of Supramolecules and Assemblies, and for his editing of the Primers page for nanoparticles.org.
Education
Texter received his secondary education at Penn Manor High School in Millersville, Pennsylvania, where he lettered in soccer and wrestling. He matriculated to Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1967 with the aid of a Lehigh Merit Scholarship and graduated with a BSEE in 1971. He was mentored in his undergraduate years by John J. Karakash, who designed the Electrical Engineering curriculum at Lehigh to liberally educate through engineering. His proclivity for control theory sparked an interest in physiology and then biochemistry, and his undergraduate biochemistry studies led him to physical chemistry. He continued at Lehigh to obtain an MS in chemistry in 1973, an MS in mathematics in 1976, and a Ph.D in chemistry in 1976. He was mentored in graduate education by Jim Sturm, Daniel Zeroka, Albert Zettlemoyer, Fred Fowkes, and Kamil Klier, his thesis advisor. Texter spent a postdoctoral year in biophysical spectroscopy at the University of California at Irvine and a postdoctoral year with Eugene S. Stevens at Binghamton University, developing a time-dependent Hartree–Fock model for circular dichroism in saccharides.
Industrial career
Texter has over 30 years experience in industrial small particle and coating technologies. He worked in the Eastman Kodak Research Laboratories from 1978 to 1998 and he was managing consultant for Strider Research Corporation from 1998 to 2002. From the spring of 2001 he served for a year as a rotator in the National Science Foundation Chemistry Division as Program Director of Experimental Physical Chemistry. While at Eastman Kodak he was a prolific inventor and co-inventor in the field of dispersion technology, and he received 42 issued US Patents and numerous EU and PTO patents.
Academic career
Texter joined the College of Engineering and Technology of Eastern Michigan University in the fall of 2002 as a professor of polymer and coating technology at the rank of full professor. In 2005 he was awarded tenure. Since joining EMU, he also has been a faculty member of the Coatings Research Institute. He spent a sabbatical year near Berlin as a Fellow of the Max Planck Society with Professor Markus Antionetti at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces. His research has focused on small particle science and technology, the development of particle-based advanced materials, and polymeric advanced materias. His work has focused on applied problems in dispersion and materials technology for advanced coatings in imaging, antifouling, corrosion mitigation, and antimicrobial prophylaxis. He has made significant contributions to the understanding of microemulsion structure and the complex equilibria that exist among the exotic molecular complexes contained in microemulsions, as well as in microemulsion polymerization. Seminal self-diffusion studies done with collaborators at Eastman Kodak produced order parameters that proved transitions among such complex equilibria are continuous phase transitions. More recently he has demonstrated thermally initiated microemulsion polymerization in bicontinuous microemulsions, wherein the expansion of the correlation length was only 20% relative to the precursor microemulsion, surpassing competitive attempts by two orders of magnitude. In more recent years, he has become a leading innovator in the fields of stimuli responsive polymers and polymerized ionic liquids. Microemulsion polymerization of ionic liquid surfactant acrylates was used to produce transparent gels that reversibly undergo spinodal decomposition to open cell membranes and monoliths. Related nanolatexes have been formulated that appear to be the first experimental realizations of osmotic spheres.
Texter and his wife Melanie Ann Martin have a son Kurt Martin Texter, and a daughter Grace Martin Texter. Kurt works as a graphic designer in San Francisco, and Grace works as a writer and artist in Manhattan.
