Thomas Mensah

Thomas Owusu Mensah was a Ghanaian-American chemical engineer and inventor. At Corning in the 1980s he made optical fibre cheap enough to compete with copper, helping lay the ground for the internet. He held 14 patents and was elected a Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors.

Early life and education

He was born in Kumasi in 1950. His father, J. K. Mensah, shipped cocoa products to chocolate makers in France, and Thomas became fluent in French, winning the national French competition at both O level (1968) and A level (1970). He attended Adisadel College and studied chemical engineering at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. A French government fellowship took him to Montpellier University, where he earned a PhD in chemical engineering in 1978, after a certificate course at MIT in 1977.

Fibre optics

After working at Air Products and Chemicals from 1980 to 1983, he joined Corning Glass Works. Optical fibre could then be drawn at only about 2 metres per second; his innovations raised that to 20 metres per second by 1985, and later above 50, bringing fibre's cost into line with copper cable. Corning gave him its Individual Outstanding Contributor Award in 1985.

Defence and nanotechnology

In 1986 he moved to Bell Laboratories, where he led work on laser-guided weapons for the US Department of Defense. He later became president and chief executive of Georgia Aerospace Systems, which makes nanocomposite structures for missiles and aircraft, and in 2017 edited the textbook Nanotechnology Commercialization. He served on the board of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and on the NASA Space Grant Consortium board at Georgia Tech. KNUST awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2017.

Death

He died on 27 March 2024.