Ron Darby was born in La Veta, Colorado on September 12, 1932. He earned his BS (1955) and PhD (1963) in chemical engineering from Rice University, Houston, Texas. After working briefly for Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) in Dallas, Texas, he returned to academia and joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University (TAMU) in 1965 as an assistant professor. He remained a faculty member at TAMU until his formal retirement in 2001. Thereafter, he was Professor Emeritus until his death on July 14, 2017. During his long career at Texas A&M, Ron taught a variety of courses in chemical engineering. His research interests were in the areas of non-Newtonian and viscoelastic fluid mechanics and two phase flows in the context of safety relief valves, and he published extensively on these topics. In addition to a large number of research publications in archival journals, Ron authored two books, Viscoelastic Fluids: An Introduction to their Properties and Behavior (Dekker, 1976) and Chemical Engineering Fluid Mechanics (3rd ed.

, CRC Press, 2017). He was elected fellow of the AIChE in 1994, and he was honored with numerous awards for his research contributions. These included the Faculty Distinguished Achievement Award (1971) from his department and the Publication Award from AIChE in 1984. He was also the recipient of the Distinguished Service Award (2003) of the Texas AIChE and the Former Students Award from Texas A&M for excellence in teaching. In 1981, he was designated "Minnie Stevens Piper Professor of Chemical Engineering." Ron was, in addition, a captain in the U.S. navy.

In 1975, he earned "First commanding officer," USNR's outstanding leadership award. Prof Raj P. Chhabra is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Shiv Nadar University, Delhi NCR. Prof Chhabra wrote the previous edition with the late Prof Ron Darby (formerly of Texas A&M University).