Walter Jennings, PhD

Walter Jennings is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis.  From the mid 50’s through the mid 60’s his flavor research concerned the isolation and identification of a number of “flavor impact compounds” and “contributory flavor compounds” from numerous fruits, spices, essential oils, beer and meats.

All this necessitated a lot of research methods, sample preparation, improvements in GC injectors and detectors and in methods of column manufacture.

In 1974 he was the cofounder of J & W Scientific which became the world’s largest supplier of fused silica columns. The company was purchased in 1986 by Fisons, but in 1996 a management group led by professor Jennings repurchased the company. In 2000 company was sold to Agilent Technologies.