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.