Biography
Dr. Janusz S. Laskowski, FCIM, is President of Laskowski Research Inc. and Professor Emeritus of mineral processing at UBC. He graduated B.Sc. in chemistry from Silesian University of Technology in 1956, obtained M.Sc. degree in chemical engineering in 1958, and Ph.D. degree in mineral processing in 1963. In 1961/62, he spent a year as a postgraduate student at the Department of Colloid Chemistry, Lomonosov University, Moscow (Prof. P.A. Rehbinder) and was involved in doing research under supervision of Professor V.I. Klassen at the Mining Institute of USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow. In 1966 he translated Klassen’s monograph on “Coal Flotation” (V.I. Klassen, Coal Flotation, Wyd. Slask, Katowice, 1966; Polish text). In 1967, Dr. Laskowski obtained a Leverhulme Trust Post-Doctoral Fellowship and in 1967/68 spent one year as a post-doctoral fellow with Dr. J.A. Kitchener at the Department of Mineral Technology, Imperial College, London. When Dr. Kitchener retired he edited jointly with Prof. John Ralston the volume “Colloid Chemistry in Mineral Processing” in his honor. The book was published by Elsevier in 1992.
Dr. Laskowski was an associate professor of mineral processing at the Silesian University of Technology until 1973 when he was appointed professor of mineral processing at the Wroclaw Technical University, Wroclaw, Poland. In 1971/72, he was a visiting professor and taught several courses at the University of Chile in Santiago; during this time having been invited by Professor Fernando Concha he spent one month with the University of Concepcion and updated his book (“FundamentosFisicoquimios de la Mineralurgia”) which was then translated into Spanish and was published by the University of Concepcion in 1974.
Dr. Laskowski was a member of the International Committee in charge of International Mineral Processing Congresses since 1970, chaired the 13th International Mineral Processing Congress in Warsaw in 1979 and edited the two-volume proceedings (J.S. Laskowski (editor), Mineral Processing – Proc. 13th Int. Mineral Processing Congress, Elsevier, 1980) and three volumes of the round-table seminars. In 1981, he was invited by Professor Douglas W. Fuerstenau to join him as a visiting professor and spent one year with the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1982 he was a Professor of Mineral Processing in the Department of Mining and Mineral Process Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. When Professor Jan Leja retired after 20 years with the University of British Columbia, he edited a volume “Frothing in Flotation” in his honor (published by Gordon and Breach in 1989). This book turned out to be the first volume in the series of publications; “Frothing in Flotation II”, edited jointly with E.T. Woodburn, was published by Gordon and Breach in 1998; “Frothing in Flotation III”, edited jointly with C.T. O’Connor and J.P. Franzidis, appeared as a special issue of International Journal of Mineral Processing, Vol. 64, Nos. 2-3 (2002).
In 1966, Dr. Laskowski started a series of Polish National Symposia “Physico-Chemical Problems of Mineral Processing” and was a chairman of the Organizing Committee until 1980. When he left the country the Symposia were taken over by his previous Ph.D. students and research associates (Dr. J. Lekki, Dr. A. Luszczkiewicz, Dr. J. Drzymala, Dr. Z. Sadowski), and since then he has been a member of the Editorial Board.
The two sabbatical leaves from the University of British Columbia he spent with Prof. Jean Cases’s Surface Chemistry Group at EcoleNationaleSuperieure de Geologie, Nancy, France in 1987/88, and with the Department of Chemical Engineering of the University of Cape Town in 1996.
In 1984, Dr. Laskowski founded “Coal Preparation” international journal and was its editor-in-chief until 2004.
In 1995, he initiated a new series of UBC-McGill international symposia on Fundamentals of Mineral Processing and chaired the first Symposium on “Processing of Hydrophobic Minerals and Fine Coal”, Vancouver, August 1995. The proceedings volume “Processing of Hydrophobic Minerals and Fine Coal” was edited by J.S. Laskowksi and G.W. Poling and was published by CIM Metallurgical Society in 1995. He chaired the 3rd Symposium on “Polymers in Mineral Processing”, Quebec City, 1999, and edited the proceedings volume which appeared under the same title. He chaired the 5th Symposium, “Particle Size Enlargement in Mineral Processing”, which was held in Hamilton inAugust 2004, and edited the Symposium Proceedings. In 2006, Metallurgical Society of Canadian Institution of Mining organized the 6th UBC-McGill-University of Alberta international symposium on “Interfacial Phenomena in Fine Particle Technology” in honour of Professor Janusz Laskowski. This was followed by a publication of a special issue of Canadian Metallurgical Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 3, 2007.
With Professor David Boger he co-chaired the Engineering Foundation Conference on “Rheology in the Mineral Industry”, San Diego, February, 1997. The papers presented at this conference appeared in a special issue of Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy Review (Vol. 20, Nos. 1-3, 1999), edited by D.V. Boger and J.S. Laskowski, and in a special issue of Coal Preparation (Vol. 18, Nos. 3-4, 1997) edited by J.S. Laskowski and H. Usui.Dr. Laskowski co-chaired the 2nd Engineering Foundation Conference on “Rheology in the Mineral Indiustry”, Hawaii, March, 1999.
Dr. Laskowski along with Dr. J. Drelich co-chaired the Symposium “Apparent and Microscopic Contact Angles” held in conjunction with the 216th National American Chemical Society Meeting, Boston, August 24-27, 1998, and jointly with J. Drelich and K.J. Mittal edited the volume “Apparent and Microscopic Contact Angles” published by VSP in 2000.
Dr. Laskowski’s monograph on “Coal Flotation and Fine Coal Utilization” was published by Elsevier in 2001.
In 2000, Dr. Laskowski won the Arthur F. Taggart Award from the Society of Mining Engineering. In 2008, at the 24th International Mineral Processing Congress in Beijing he was awarded themineral processing’s highest award, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Mineral Processing Council. He is a recipient of the 2010 Antoine Gaudin Award.
He supervised 20 Ph.D. theses, and published over 250 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings.
Dr. Laskowski retired from University of British Columbia in 2001 but continue doing research with a group of graduate students, and in collaboration with the University of Concepcion (Chile), Helsinki University of Technology, Universidad Autonoma de San Luis Potosi (Mexico) and with CSIRO in Melbourne.
In 2002 he incorporated his own research company, Laskowski Research Inc.
Selected Publications
- 160. Rebolledo, E., Laskowski, J.S., Gutierrez, L. and Castro, S., Use of dispersants in flotation of molybdenite in seawater, Minerals Engineering, 2016, in press.;
- 159. Castro, S., Lopez-Valdivieso, A. and Laskowski, J.S., Review of the flotation of molybdenite. Part I: Surface properties and floatability, Int. J. Mineral Processing, Vol. 148, 48-58 (2016).;