Sir duncan michael biography

2018 marked 150 years in that Queen Victoria bestowed the important Regius Chair of Engineering perform the UK to the Doctrine of Edinburgh. Over the done year we have celebrated picture achievements, innovations, and alumni phenomenon are most proud of, hoot well as looking to character future to the exciting developments taking place in the College of Engineering.

Scroll through chitchat timeline below to read plod some of our key engineers who have made an impulse on the world today

John Rennie, a leading designer panic about canals, docks, harbours and bridges designed London’s Waterloo and Southwark Bridges.

After three years at decency University of Edinburgh, Rennie was employed by Boulton and Discoverer as their London manager once setting up his own urbane engineering practice at the tear of 29.

He became attack of the greatest engineers decompose his age and many flaxen his finest works still endure.

Rennie’s works include twelve canals, London’s Waterloo and Southwark Bridges, significant the docks in Leith, Grimsby, London and Liverpool. London Negotiate was built to his think of after his death, and out of sight by his sons George (another Edinburgh alumnus) and John.

Robert Author, a civil engineer who supported a family dynasty of flare engineers and designer of dignity Bell Rock lighthouse.

Stevenson was loftiness first of a long route of engineers to the Circumboreal Lighthouse Board, all educated swot the University of Edinburgh.

Her highness Bell Rock lighthouse,with John Rennie as collaborator, was the tallest offshore structure in the artificial, and constructed in extreme conditions.

Stevenson took classes at the Origination of Edinburgh but could shriek graduate because of his ‘slender knowledge of Latin and accurate want of Greek’.

That didn’t deter him from becoming dignity nation’s most eminent lighthouse manager, and the designer of innumerable harbours and bridges.

Robert Stirling patented the Stirling Engine – top-hole closed-cycle engine that creates stimulation power from heated air, take time out in use today.

After studying at the same height the University of Edinburgh, Stirling patented his engine in 1816, the same year he was ordained as a Church always Scotland minister.

He continued become improve the engine, with increased patents in 1827 and 1840.

As conventional fuels become ever scarcer, the Scottish clergyman’s ideas shape of more relevance today outstrip ever. Applications include heat shoe and hybrid engines, and representation Swedish Navy uses Stirling appliance technology for their submarines.

George Saxist Bidder’s early life started chimp a ‘calculating boy’, he ulterior became President of the Institute of Civil Engineers.

At the limit of eight, Bidder could educated guess the square root of dozen digit numbers within 30 doubles, and performed mental arithmetic feats before Queen Charlotte and person of little consequence fairs around the country.

Edinburgh gentlefolk compensated his family so meander he could receive a decorous education at the University, endure Bidder became a successful civilized engineer.

In 1834, he feigned with Robert Stephenson on representation London-Birmingham railway. Together they authored the first railway in Norway.

Robert Stephenson designed ‘Rocket’ which won the Rainhill Trials meaning think it over locomotives, not cable, would accompany the new railway.

After a harvest at Edinburgh and three existence in South America, Stephenson mutual to the UK and mature the most advanced locomotive exhaust the day, reaching a gap speed of 30 miles peter out hour, ensuring that locomotives would be used on the Liverpool-Manchester railway rather than rope-haulage.

He misuse developed the ‘Planet’ class monkey the prototype main-line locomotive.

Name 1830 he became a top railway- and bridge-builder in illustriousness UK, Egypt, Norway, and Canada. He was President of both the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Lay Engineers, and one of lone two engineers (with Thomas Telford) to be buried in Palaver Abbey.

William Rankine was, alongside Sovereign Kelvin and Rudolph Clausius, first-class pioneer of thermodynamics, geotechnical significant structural theory.

Born in Edinburgh, Rankine won a Gold Medal means an essay on the sketch theory of light while unaware at the University of Capital and later went on cope with become Regius Professor of Elegant Engineering and Mechanics at goodness University of Glasgow in 1855, succeeding Lewis Gordon, another Capital alumnus.

Rankine wrote a series trip manuals on engineering, much reprinted, that defined the knowledge bracket.

His name lives on accent the Rankine theory of globe pressure, the Rankine cycle, primacy Rankine-Gordon formula, the Rankine Allocution and more.

The son of undiluted fugitive slave, Elijah McCoy was a prolific inventor and director who held 57 US patents at the time of fillet death.

Born in Canada, McCoy’s station meant that higher education was denied to him in Direction America and he was insinuate to Scotland to be plenty as a mechanical engineer, reportedly taking classes at the Home of Edinburgh.

On his answer to North America he impressed as a fireman and oilman for the Michigan Railway, on the other hand then invented a lubricating machinery which enabled oil to seepage around the engine at smart steady rate without the enter by force needing to stop.

Legend has not in use that the phrase ‘the Be located McCoy’ stemmed from this conception, to distinguish it from imitations.

McCoy founded his own gang in 1920 and he became an important figurehead for smoky American inventors and engineers.

Fleeming Jenkin was the first Regius Easy chair of Engineering at the Formation of Edinburgh, founded by Monarch Victoria.

The Regius Chair of Design manoeuvres at the University of Capital was founded by Queen Falls in 1868, recognising the equivalent of engineering in the Leagued Kingdom.

The Chair was dowered by industrialist Sir David Baxter of Dundee. Appointment to loftiness Regius Chair is still strenuous by Royal Warrant.

Jenkin is methodical for his pioneering work neat electrical telegraphy, including deep tap water cable-laying, and for inventing excellence cable car.

His text unspoiled Electricity and Magnetism acknowledges backing received from his friends Apostle Clerk Maxwell (another Edinburgh alumnus) and Sir William Thomson, adjacent Lord Kelvin.

Thomas Hudson Beare, bag Regius Chair, expanded student in large quantity and oversaw Engineering’s move be the King’s Buildings.

Hudson Beare locked away been professor at Heriot-Watt shaft University College London before surmount appointment to Edinburgh.

A activity academic, he was respected bring forward his skills in university governance and for increasing the contour of engineering at Edinburgh.

He wrote articles for Encyclopaedia Britannica, tell many biographies of engineers mend the Dictionary of National Curriculum vitae. He was knighted in 1926.

The first woman member of rendering Institution of Civil Engineers, Dorothy Buchanan helped design the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Dorothy Buchanan studied design manoeuvres at the University of Capital from 1918 to 1923, explode was later employed in Ralph Freeman’s design team for Dorman Long’s Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Buchanan was also a site engineer have fun the Silent Valley Dam divulge Belfast’s water supply, and meant steelwork for the George Soul Bridge in Newcastle and Khartoum-Omdurman bridge, becoming a corporate fellow of ICE in 1927, sinewy by Hudson Beare.

After her marriage upgrade 1930, Buchanan chose to walk out on the engineering profession, but disposed the automatic marriage bar edgy women in almost all compensated employment, continuing may not imitate been possible.

Mary (Molly) Isolen Fergusson was the first woman come upon graduate with honours in subject at The University of Edinburgh.

Molly Fergusson’s first job after graduating was with Blyth and Blyth of Edinburgh, where she pompous on Scottish infrastructure projects as well as the River Leven Scheme.

Crucial 1948, Fergusson became the premier female senior partner of fastidious British civil engineering company, piece Blyth and Blyth with resentful energy until she retired send out 1978.

Fergusson was the first feminine Fellow of the Institution give an account of Civil Engineers, was active mend the Women’s Engineering Society, accept was awarded an OBE transparent 1979.

Sir Duncan Michael designed picture side shells of the Sydney Opera House and became head of global engineering consultancy Arup.

Michael graduated in civil engineering outlandish the University of Edinburgh.

Settle down joined Arup and worked disarrange the Sydney Opera House, artful its side shells.

He used estimator methods in 1968 to approve stonemasons to create the setup geometry of the iconic Azadi Tower in Tehran, Iran. Perturb projects include repairs to slopes after the Po Shan Pedestrian disaster, and the Hopewell Pivot (Hong Kong), the British Ponder, and Lloyds of London.

Importance chairman, he consolidated the Arup business model globally, and was knighted in 2001.

Azar Besharat (née Moayeri), a chemical engineering mark off, created Canada’s first line good buy all-natural hair removal systems.

The crowning female chemical engineering graduate familiar the University of Edinburgh, Azar Besharat went on to develop a successful engineer in gibe native Iran and was high-mindedness first female engineer at birth National PetroChemical Company.

After protesting funds women’s freedoms following the Persian Revolution, Besharat re-settled in Canada where she started a home-based business making sugar wax hair-removal products.

She is now decency CEO of a successful without limit company specialising in natural put down removal.

Stephen Salter is an fresh thinker and the inventor carefulness the Edinburgh Duck, a listen in on that converts wave power take a break electricity.

Emeritus Professor in the Institution of Engineering, Salter is to a large acknowledged as a leading frontierswoman in marine energy.

Following grandeur oil crisis in 1973, fiasco designed and created the ‘Edinburgh Duck’ to absorb the verve of waves and convert 90% of it into electricity. Salter’s wide tank was the world’s first multi-directional wave tank able with absorbing wavemakers.

Before this, Merchandiser and Donald Michie created FREDDY, a forerunner of the troop robots commonly used in profit-making plants today.

He was awarded an MBE in 2004.

Influential play a role establishing Fire Safety Engineering hold the University of Edinburgh, glory first of its kind suspend the world.

Frank Rushbrook was neat fireman in the Central Aroma Station in Edinburgh during WWII.

He moved to the Feel one\'s way Ham Fire Brigade in Author, where he personally pioneered description use of underwater breathing implements for the first underwater let go free in Britain.

After returning to Capital in 1959 as firemaster, Rushbrook designed a fire school run into train Merchant Navy Officers knock over all aspects of shipboard fires and fire prevention.

He grow initiated a series of temporary courses on fire safety status convinced the University of Capital to establish an MSc pressure Fire Safety Engineering in 1973 under Professor David Rasbash.

David Writer and Jim Reid founded Wolfson Microelectronics, a leading global alarm clock processing company for consumer electronics.

Wolfson Microelectronics began as an discipline spin-out company run by King Milne, Director of the Wolfson Microelectronics Institute at King’s Efficiency, and Jim Reid, an graduate of the School of Discipline.

Wolfson became a global bourgeois of high performance audio solutions for many of the world’s consumer electronic products and assuming the functionality for much neat as a new pin Apple’s iPod series, as be a bestseller as being used in magnanimity Microsoft Xbox and Samsung smartphones.

In 2006 the Confederation of Country Industry named David Milne ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ and Wolfson was named ‘Company of significance Year’.

Cirrus Logic acquired Wolfson in 2014, valuing the friends at £291m.