Gallery of engineers

James Watt (1736-1819)
Thomas Telford (1757-1834)
George Stephenson (1781-1848)
Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875)
Christian Andreas Doppler (1803-1853)
Robert Stephenson (1803-1859)
Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859)
Ada, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852)
Sir Joseph William Bazalgette (1819-1891)
Sir William Siemens (1823-1883)
William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs (1824-1907)
Gustav Kirchhoff (1902-1974)
Sir Joseph Swan (1828-1914)
Willoughby Smith (1828-1891)
James Clark Maxwell (1831-1879)
Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923)
Karl Benz (1844-1929)
George Westinghouse (1846-1914)
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)
Alexander Siemens (1847-1928)
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
Sir John Ambrose Fleming (1849-1945)
Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925)
Silvanus Phillips Thompson (1851-1916)
Sir Charles Algernon Parsons (1854-1931)
Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912)
Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923)
Sir Joseph John Thomson (1856-1940)
Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894)
Rudolf Diesel (1858-1913)
August and Louis Lumière (1862-1954; 1864-1948)
Sir Frederick Henry Royce (1863-1933)
Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti (1864-1930)
Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865-1923)
Wilbur Wright (1867-1912)
Lord Rutherford of Nelson (1871-1937)
John Leslie Langham Thompson (1906-2001)
Charles Hesterman Merz (1874-1940)
Marchese Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937)
Edmund Basil Wedmore (1876-1956)
William Morris, Viscount Nuffield (1877-1963)
Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878-1972)
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Eugene Burton Ely (1886-1911)
Henri Coandă (1886-1972)
Thomas Lydwell Eckersley (1886-1959)
Walter Schottky (1886-1976)
Sir Barnes Neville Wallis (1887-1979)
John Logie Baird (1888-1946)
Igor Sikorsky (1889-1972)
Verena Holmes (1889-1964)
Percy Shaw (1890-1976)
Nikolaus Otto (1832-1891)
Sir Edward Victor Appleton (1892-1965)
Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt (1892-1973)
Sir James Martin (1893-1981)
Henry Ford (1863-1947)
Dame Caroline Haslett (1895-1957)
Reginald Joseph Mitchell (1895-1937)
Amelia Earhart (1897-1937)
Katharine Burr Blodgett (1898-1979)
Earl Mountbatten of Burma (1900-1979)
Robert Dell (1900-1992)
Enrico Fermi (1901-1954)
Lord Hinton of Bankside (1901-1983)
Charles Lindbergh (1862-1954)
Paul Dirac (1902-1984)
Alan Dower Blumlein (1903-1942)
Amy Johnson (1903-1941)
Sir John Turton Randall (1905-1984)
Tommy Flowers (1905-1998)
Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992)
Soichiro Honda (1906-1991)
Sir Frank Whittle (1907-1996)
Masaru Ibuka (1908-1997)
William Shockley (1910-1989)
Reginald Victor Jones (1911-1997)
Sir Frederic Calland Williams (1911-1977)
Alan Turing (1912-1954)
Sir Maurice Wilkes (1913-2010)
Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000)
Charles Spagnoletti (1832-1915)
Claude Elwood Shannon (1916-2001)
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield (1919-2004)
Sir Alastair Pilkington (1920-1995)
Akio Morita (1921-1999)
Jack Kilby (1923-2005)
Joseph F Engelberger (born 1925)
Theodore Harold Maiman (1927-2007)
Dame Stephanie Shirley (born 1933)
Sir Charles Kuen Kao (born 1933)
Ray Dolby (1933-2013)
Gary Flandro (born 1934)
Karen Sparck Jones (1935-2007)
Ratan Naval Tata (born 1937)
Trevor Baylis (born 1937)
Sir Clive Sinclair (born 1940)
Baron Sainsbury of Turville (born 1940)
T V Ramachandran (born 1945)
Stephen William Hawking (born 1942)
Burt Rutan (born 1943)
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)
Vint Cerf (born 1943)
Deng Nan (born 1945)
Sir James Dyson (born 1947)
Hermann Hauser (born 1948)
Steve Wozniak (born 1950)
Ursula Martin (born 1953)
Steve Furber (born 1953)
Shuji Nakamura (born 1954)
Anne G Shaw (1904-1982)
Bill Gates (born 1955)
Steve Jobs (1955-2011)
Dame Sue Ion (born 1955)
Sir Tim Berners-Lee (born 1955)
Er Meng Hwa (born 1956)
Muffy Calder (born 1958)
Carole Goble (born 1961)
Naomi Climer (born 1964)
Sir Jonathan Ive (born 1967)
Elon Musk (born 1971)
Roma Agrawal (fl. 2015)
Mark Zuckerburg (born 1984)
A F Harvey Prize Winner 2015
IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year Awards Winner 2015
Faraday Medal Winner 2015
IET Present Around the World Winner 2015
IET First Lego League Winners 2016
IET Faraday Challenge Winner 2015
Thomas Parker (1843-1915)

James Watt (1736-1819)

Mechanical engineer whose improved steam engine design was key to the industrial revolution. Watt began his career as an instrument maker, and in 1764 was given a Newcomen engine to repair. He realised that the engine design was inefficient and added a condensing chamber to rectify the problem. In 1775 Watt joined with Matthew Boulton to produce the patented Boulton-Watt engines. Watt also developed the rotary engine, the double action engine and the steam indicator. The SI unit of power, the watt, is named after him.

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Thomas Telford (1757-1834)

Civil engineer, known as the ‘Colossus of Roads’. Telford was apprenticed to a stonemason at the age of 14 and worked in Edinburgh before moving to London in 1782. In 1787 he was appointed Surveyor of Public Works in Shropshire. Telford went on to design many canals, roads, bridges and aqueducts in the UK, including Ellesmere Canal, the Pontcysyllte aqueduct and the Menai suspension bridge, pioneering the use of cast iron for large structures. He also rebuilt the London-Holyhead road and developed an improved transport network for the Highlands. Telford was the first President of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

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George Stephenson (1781-1848)

Railway engineer, known as the ‘Father of Railways.’ Stephenson had no formal education and worked in coal mines, studying at night school. He became expert in managing steam engines, and in 1814 built his first locomotive. In 1815, Stephenson developed the ‘Geordie’ safety lamp. He was appointed Engineer to the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1821 and, in 1826, Engineer to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first public railway in the UK to use steam locomotives. In 1829, the company set up a competition for the best railway locomotive, which was won by Stephenson’s ‘Rocket’.

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Charles Babbage (1791-1871)

Mathematician and computer pioneer. Babbage was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge and in the 1820s constructed a ‘Difference Engine’, a machine designed to perform mathematical calculations. Babbage also designed a more complex ‘Analytical Engine’, which would perform calculations based on a system of punched cards and which included a memory unit. The mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote a program for the Analytical Engine, but the machine was not built in Babbage’s lifetime.

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Michael Faraday (1791-1867)

Scientist, known as the Father of Electricity. Faraday began his scientific career as an assistant to Sir Humphrey Davy at the Royal Institution, and went on to become Director. In 1821, Faraday built two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation. Ten years later he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction, which forms the basis of modern electromagnetic technology. He also carried out significant work in electrochemistry, stating the First and Second Laws of Electrolysis.

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Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875)

Scientist and inventor, known for the five-needle telegraph. Wheatstone was originally apprenticed as a musical instrument maker, but became interested in science after buying a book on Volta's experiments. He continued research on acoustics, and invented the English concertina and the portable harmonium. In 1834 he was appointed to the Chair of Experimental Physics at King's College, London. In 1837, Wheatstone went into partnership with William Fothergill Cooke to develop the first practical electrical telegraph system in the UK. Wheatstone also promoted the ‘Wheatstone’ bridge, invented by Samuel Christie and invented the ‘Playfair’ code.

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Christian Andreas Doppler (1803-1853)

Mathematician and physicist, known for his postulation of the Doppler Effect. Doppler was a Professor at Prague Polytechnic from 1835, and in 1836 published his famous work on the coloured light of the binary stars. It was in this publication that Doppler set out the principle that the observed frequency of a wave depends on the relative speed of the source and the observer, now known as the Doppler Effect. Doppler later moved to the University of Vienna, where he was head of the Institute for Experimental Physics.

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Robert Stephenson (1803-1859)

Railway engineer, known for his pioneering work on the UK’s first railways. Stephenson, the son of George Stephenson, was apprenticed to a mining engineer at the age of 15 but was released from his apprenticeship to help his father survey the Stockton-Darlington railway. Stephenson worked on the design of his father’s ‘Rocket’ locomotive and built a number of important early locomotives. He went on to work for a number of the UK’s developing railway companies, and designed bridges including the Royal Border Bridge, the Britannia Bridge and the Victoria Bridge in Montreal.

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Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859)

Civil and mechanical engineer, known as one of the greatest figures of the Industrial Revolution, who revolutionised public transport and modern engineering. Among his achievements were the Great Western Railway, many bridges and tunnels (including the Clifton suspension bridge), and the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship, the SS Great Britain. After building the SS Great Britain, Brunel designed an even larger steamship, the SS Great Eastern, which would be the largest ship afloat until the beginning of the 20th century. This ship was used in the laying of the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable in 1865-6.

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Ada, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852)

Mathematician, celebrated for having written what is described as the world’s first computer program. Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, worked with Charles Babbage on his Analytical Engine. Her Notes on the Analytical Engine, published in 1843, described the first computer program. Lovelace also corresponded with other scientists of her day, including Michael Faraday. She suffered from ill health and died in 1852 at the age of 37.

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Sir Joseph William Bazalgette (1819-1891)

Civil engineer and chief engineer to London's Metropolitan Board of Works who designed the sewer system for Central London. The new sewers were funded by Parliament as a solution to the ‘Great Stink’ and the cholera epidemics of the 1850s. Bazalgette designed a system of underground sewers to carry the raw sewage. He decided to plan for more capacity than was then required, and the diameter of the sewers (twice that which he calculated as necessary) meant that the Victorian system could cope with later population increases. Bazalgette succeeded in greatly reducing outbreaks of both cholera and typhoid.

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Sir William Siemens (1823-1883)

Engineer who founded Siemens in the UK, and first President of the Society of Telegraph Engineers, (now the IET). Siemens came to Britain from Germany to sell his brother Werner’s patent for an electroplating system and then stayed here as the representative of his brothers’ company. In 1858, he set up the firm of Siemens and Halske, which became Siemens Brothers in 1865. Siemens played a major role in the telegraph industry, helping to set up the London - Bombay telegraph network, and was involved in the emerging electric lighting and power industries.

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William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs (1824-1907)

Physicist and pioneer of electrical engineering. In 1846, Thomson was appointed to the Chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, where he taught and conducted his research for 53 years. While at Glasgow, he founded the first university laboratory to be freely available to students. In 1892, he was made Baron Kelvin of Largs. Kelvin was an advisor on projects including the first transatlantic telegraph cable and designed a series of telegraph instruments, along with a marine compass. Kelvin was President of the IEE in 1874, 1889 and 1907.

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Gustav Kirchhoff (1902-1974)

Physicist who coined the term ‘black body radiation’. Kirchhoff is known for his circuit laws (formulated while still a student), his laws of spectroscopy and his law of thermochemistry, as well as his solution of Maxwell’s equations. He also discovered (with Robert Bunsen) the elements caesium and rubidium. Kirchhoff was awarded the Rumford Medal in 1862 and in 1875 was appointed to the first Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Berlin.

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Sir Joseph Swan (1828-1914)

Scientist who developed the incandescent lamp. Swan was apprenticed as a pharmacist, later joining his brother-in-law’s chemical firm Mawson’s in Newcastle. He developed and patented a number of important photographic processes, including the dry plate process, carbon printing and bromide paper. Swan successfully demonstrated his carbon filament vacuum lamp to the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society in February 1879. These lamps were used for the first domestic houses and the first theatre in the UK to be lit by incandescent lamps. In 1883, Swan’s company joined with Edison to form the Edison Swan United Electric Light Company (Ediswan).

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Willoughby Smith (1828-1891)

Electrical engineer who discovered the photoconductivity of selenium. Smith was Electrician and Manager of the Wire Department for the Gutta Percha Works. He was involved in laying the first cable between England and France, the first Mediterranean cable and the first successful transatlantic cable. Smith was working on a test circuit for telegraph cables and used selenium as a semiconductor. In testing, he found there were inconsistences, which he realised were due to its photoconductivity. Smith’s work led to the development of photovoltaics. He was President of the Society of Telegraph Engineers and Electricians in 1883.

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James Clark Maxwell (1831-1879)

Mathematical physicist, famous for his pioneering work on electromagnetic field theory. Maxwell was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy at Marischal College, Aberdeen, in 1856 and later Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at King’s College, London. In 1871, he became the first Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge and designed the Cavendish Laboratory. In 1873, Maxwell published his celebrated Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, in which he presented his equations for electromagnetic fields. This work is regarded as the beginning of field theory.

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Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923)

Civil engineer and architect, known for his construction of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Eiffel worked for a number of railway companies before co-founding Eiffel et Cie in 1868. In 1881, Eiffel was asked by Auguste Bartholdi to design the structure for the Statue of Liberty. The statue was erected at the Eiffel factory in Paris before being dismantled and shipped to the United States. The Eiffel Tower was first proposed by Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier in 1884, and was built by Eiffel in 1887. After retirement, Eiffel went on to conduct important research in aerodynamics.

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Karl Benz (1844-1929)

Engineer and inventor, who developed the first automobile powered by an internal combustion engine. Benz trained as a mechanical and locomotive engineer and established his own foundry in 1871. He developed a 2-stroke and a 4-stroke engine: the latter would power the first internal combustion automobile, the Benz Patent Motorwagen. In 1888, Benz’s wife Bertha took the motorwagen on the world’s first long-distance automobile trip, covering over 100 km. Benz’s company, Benz &Cie, merged with DMG in 1926 to form Daimler-Benz, which would produce the Mercedes-Benz range of vehicles.

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George Westinghouse (1846-1914)

Engineer and electrical pioneer. During the Civil War, Westinghouse served in the New York National Guard (joining at the age of 15), the New York Cavalry and the US Navy. He developed a rotary steam engine at the age of 19, and in 1884 became interested in electricity supply. In 1885 he saw the potential of AC systems, which would compete with Edison’s DC system and patents. Westinghouse and Edison disagreed in the ‘War of Currents’ which ended with the successful adoption of AC in the US. Westinghouse also invented the railway brake.

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Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)

Scientist and inventor, famous for his development of a practical telephone, for which he was awarded the first US patent in 1876. Bell pioneered communication systems for the deaf, and in 1875 developed a simple receiver that could turn electricity into sound. He was granted a patent for his telephone and in 1877 founded the Bell Telephone Company. Bell also worked on other inventions in the fields of communications and aeronautics, and was one of the founder members of the National Geographic Society.

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Alexander Siemens (1847-1928)

Engineer and managing director of Siemens. Siemens worked at his family’s factory in Woolwich before returning to Germany to study at the University of Berlin and assist on cable-laying voyages in the Middle East. As a Prussian citizen, he was wounded in the Anglo-Prussian War in 1870 and was awarded the Iron Cross. Siemens returned to Woolwich and became a British citizen in 1878. He was President of the IEE in 1894 and 1904, President of the ICE in 1910 and Managing Director of Siemens from 1889. Siemens was elected to the Board of the National Physical Laboratory in 1901.

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Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

Inventor and businessman, known for his pioneering development of numerous technologies including sound recording, electric light, electric power and film recording. Edison began his career as a telegraph operator, but became famous with the invention of his phonograph in 1877. Edison set up the world’s first industrial research laboratory in Menlo Park, and took out over 1000 US patents, including the carbon microphone and the electric light bulb.

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Sir John Ambrose Fleming (1849-1945)

Electrical engineer who invented the thermionic valve. Fleming began his career with the Edison Electrical Light Company as its Electrician. In 1885 he took up the position of Chair of Electrical Technology at University College London, the first department of its kind in England. In 1899 Fleming became Scientific Advisor to the Marconi Company and worked on the first transatlantic radio transmissions. He invented the thermionic valve in 1904. As the first vacuum tube, it is considered to be the beginning of electronics.

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Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925)

Mathematician and electrical engineer, known for his research on telecommunications and his reformulation of Maxwell’s equations. Heaviside was self-taught, starting his career as a telegraph clerk and going on to conduct his own research on telegraphy and signal transmission using experimentation, mathematics and vector analysis. Heaviside predicted the existence of an ionised reflective layer in the atmosphere which would bounce radio signals back to earth (the Kennelly-Heaviside layer) and produced a series of transmission line equations. He was awarded the IET’s first Faraday Medal in 1922.

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Silvanus Phillips Thompson (1851-1916)

Physicist and engineer, known for his pioneering work on technical education and his research on electrical engineering and acoustics. Thompson was appointed to the Chair of Physics at University College, Bristol in 1876. In 1885 he was elected Principal and Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering at Finsbury Technical College, a post which he held until his death. He published a number of books including Elementary Lessons in Electricity and Magnetism, Dynamo-electric Machinery, Calculus Made Easy and biographies of Michael Faraday and Lord Kelvin. Thompson was a Fellow of the Royal Society and was President of the IEE in 1899.

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Sir Charles Algernon Parsons (1854-1931)

Engineer who designed the compound steam turbine. Parsons, the youngest son of the 3rd Earl of Rosse, studied mathematics at Trinity College Dublin and St John’s College Cambridge before joining W G Armstrong as an apprentice. In 1884, while working for Clarke, Chapman and Co, he designed his steam turbine. Parson’s turbine would revolutionise power generation and naval engineering. In 1897, the demonstration of his steam yacht Turbinia led to the design of turbine powered ships including the HMS Dreadnought in 1906. Parsons was a Fellow of the Royal Society and received the Order of Merit in 1911.

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Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912)

Mathematician, physicist and engineer who made significant contributions in the fields of mathematics, physics and celestial mechanics. Poincaré studied mathematics and engineering at the École Polytechnique and the École des Mines, and worked as an engineer and consultant as well as being a professor of mathematical physics at the Sorbonne and the École Polytechnique. Poincaré is known for his seminal work on group theory, relativity, topology, celestial mechanics and differential equations. In 1904, he formulated one of the most famous mathematical problems, the Poincaré conjecture, which was solved in 2002-3. The Poincaré Group, used in physics, is named after him.

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Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923)

Scientist who carried out research into the electric arc lamp and the action of vortices in air and water. Ayrton attended Girton College and subsequently studied electrical engineering at Finsbury Technical College. It was her paper on the arc lamp that saw her elected as the first woman Member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1899. In 1906, Ayrton was awarded the Royal Society’s Hughes Medal for her work on sand ripples. She used this research to develop the Ayrton Fan, designed to expel gas from the trenches during the First World War.

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Sir Joseph John Thomson (1856-1940)

Physicist who was awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the electron. Thomson studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge where he was made a Fellow in 1881. In 1884 he was appointed Professor of Experimental Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, where he would conduct his ground-breaking research. Thomson discovered the first subatomic particle, later known as the electron, in 1897 while working on cathode rays. He also identified the first non-radioactive isotopes and worked on the first experiments to use mass spectrometry. Thomson was President of the Royal Society from 1915-1920.

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Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894)

Physicist known for his proof of the existence of electromagnetic waves. Hertz was awarded a PhD from the University of Berlin and studied under von Helmholtz. In 1885, he became a professor at the University of Karlsruhe. Hertz used engineering instruments to construct a basic transmitter and receiver. He then conducted a series of experiments to prove that the effects noted were due to electromagnetic radiation, now known to be high-frequency radio waves. These were known as ‘Hertzian waves’ and Hertz’s experiments were the basis of practical wireless communication. The unit of frequency was named the ‘hertz’ in his honour.

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Rudolf Diesel (1858-1913)

Mechanical engineer, known for his invention of the diesel engine. Diesel worked on fuel efficiency and tried several methods of improving the efficiency of engines, including one that ran on ammonia vapour. He went on to patent a compression-ignition engine, which would become known as the diesel engine. This engine ran on peanut oil and Diesel also worked on alternatives to petroleum-based fuels.

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August and Louis Lumière (1862-1954; 1864-1948)

Filmmakers who patented the cinematograph and made what is described as the world’s first motion picture. August and Louis Lumière worked for their father’s photographic business. They took out a series of patents, including one for film perforations, before patenting the cinematograph. Their first film, Sortie de l’usine Lumière de Lyon, was made in 1894 and first shown to the public in 1895. The Lumière brothers described cinema as ‘an invention without any future’ and did not sell their cameras, instead concentrating on developments in colour photography including the invention of the colour plate.

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Sir Frederick Henry Royce (1863-1933)

Engineer and designer who co-founded Rolls-Royce and developed what would become the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. Royce began his career as an apprentice with the Great Northern Railway in Peterborough, before moving to London to work on electric lighting. He set up an electrical engineering company, F H Royce and Co., with Ernest Claremont in 1884. Royce became interested in motor cars and built his own model in 1904, the same year he met Charles Rolls, who owned a car showroom in London. Rolls agreed to sell Royce’s designs, and they formed Rolls-Royce in 1906, with Royce as Chief Engineer.

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Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti (1864-1930)

Electrical engineer, known for his innovations in power generation and distribution, and the founder of the Ferranti group of companies. At the age of 22 Ferranti became Chief Engineer of the London Electric Supply Corporation. The Corporation's Deptford Power Station commenced operation in 1890, and was the first to output electricity at 10 000 V. Ferranti was one of the first people to advocate large scale power generating stations sited outside of population centres and established the principle of the national grid using AC (alternating current) transmission. He was awarded the IET’s Faraday Medal in 1924.

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Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865-1923)

Electrical engineer and mathematician, known for his contributions to AC theory. Steinmetz (born Karl August Rudolph Steinmetz) studied at the University of Breslau before moving to the United States in 1889. He changed his name to Charles Proteus Steinmetz, taking his middle name from a character in the Odyssey. Steinmetz worked for Rudolf Eickenmeyer and subsequently General Electric, and published a series of ground-breaking papers on AC theory. He simplified the mathematical theory of AC circuits and worked on hysteresis and transients. Steinmetz was President of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now the IEEE) in 1901.

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Wilbur Wright (1867-1912)

Aviation pioneer who, with his brother Orville, invented the aeroplane that demonstrated the first controlled, powered flight. The Wright brothers established a bicycle repair shop and in 1896 began building bicycles. They became interested in aeronautics after reading about glider trials, and built their own gliders between 1900 and 1902. In 1903 they successfully flew a powered aeroplane, the Flyer I, which used a wing warp method to control flight. This control system was based on the idea of manoeuvring the aircraft by banking, similar to the technique used in cycling. The brothers were awarded a patent in 1906.

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Lord Rutherford of Nelson (1871-1937)

Physicist, known as the father of nuclear physics. Rutherford studied physics at Canterbury College, New Zealand, and the Cavendish Laboratory, where he worked under J J Thomson. He worked at McGill University and Manchester University, becoming Director of the Cavendish Laboratory in 1919. Rutherford established the theory of radioactive half-life and identified both alpha and beta radiation, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908. Rutherford went on to establish the Rutherford model of the atom and discovered the proton. He also led the team which discovered the neutron. The element Rutherfordium was named after him.

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John Leslie Langham Thompson (1906-2001)

Radio engineer. Thompson was educated at Regent Street Polytechnic and Northampton Polytechnic, joining A C Cossor in 1924. In 1934, he moved to McMichael Radio where he was Chief Engineer. During the Second World War, Thompson worked for the Ministry of Supply and was responsible for the quality control of army radio equipment. Thompson was President of the Institution of Electronic and Radio Engineers (IERE) in 1963 and was made an Honorary Fellow of the IERE in 1978.

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Charles Hesterman Merz (1874-1940)

Electrical engineer and pioneer of high-voltage AC power distribution in the UK. Merz studied at Armstrong College in Newcastle before joining the Newcastle Electric Supply Company (NESCo) as an apprentice. He later became Chief Engineer at the Cork Electric Tramways and Lighting Company before setting up a consultancy firm with William McLelland in 1898 – this company would become Merz & McLelland. Merz set up the UK’s first three-phase power supply and advised Parliament on setting up a national electrical network, which led to the 1919 Electricity Supply Act. He was killed in an air raid in 1940.

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Marchese Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937)

Inventor, physicist and pioneer of wireless communication, known for his formation of the Marconi Company and the first transatlantic radio transmission. Marconi became interested in radio research following the work of Heinrich Hertz, and built his own apparatus for practical radio communication. In 1897 he founded the Wireless Signal and Telegraph Company, which later became the Marconi Company. Marconi pioneered long-distance radio communication and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1909 (with Karl Braun) for his contribution to the development of wireless technology. In 1929, he was made a Marquess by King Victor Emmanuel III.

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Edmund Basil Wedmore (1876-1956)

Electrical engineer and Director of the British Electrical and Allied Industries Research Association (BEARA). Wedmore studied electrical engineering at Finsbury Technical College. He started his career at the Bristol Corporation, also working as a demonstrator at Finsbury. Wedmore then joined British Thomson-Houston, where he specialised in switchgear, taking out a number of patents. In 1919 he joined the Electrical Research Committee of the British Electrical and Allied Industries Manufacturers Association (BEAMA) and was the first Director of the Electrical Research Association when it was set up the following year. Wedmore also sat on several committees of the International Electrotechnical Commission.

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William Morris, Viscount Nuffield (1877-1963)

Automobile manufacturer who founded Morris Motors and the Nuffield Foundation. Morris began his career at the age of 16 with a small bicycle-repairing business in Oxford. He later manufactured motorcycles and, from 1912, automobiles. The Morris cars quickly became one of the biggest mass-production industries in the UK. During World War II, Nuffield also worked on the manufacture of aircraft. He was made Viscount Nuffield in 1938 for his services to industry and his generosity to worthy causes, and his lifetime bequests of over £30 million led to many foundations, including Nuffield College, Oxford.

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Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878-1972)

Psychologist and industrial engineer, known as the first industrial/organisational psychologist. In 1915, Gilbreth was awarded the first PhD in industrial psychology for her dissertation on teaching. Gilbreth and her husband were partners in a management consulting firm which performed time and motion studies. In 1926, Gilbreth became the second woman member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and in 1965 was the first woman to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

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Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Theoretical physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. In 1905 Einstein published four articles, known as the Annus Mirabilis papers, which are central to the foundation of modern physics. In 1921, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his services to theoretical physics. Einstein moved to the US in 1933, after the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany, and became a resident scholar at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.

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Eugene Burton Ely (1886-1911)

Aviation pioneer, known as the first pilot to complete a shipboard take-off and landing. Ely worked as a chauffeur and car salesman before flying his first aeroplane in 1910. He received his pilot’s license in the same year and worked as an exhibition pilot. Ely worked with the US Navy to investigate the use of aviation and in November 1910 successfully took off from a ship; he was also the first person to land on a ship the following year. Ely was killed in a crash in October 1911 at the age of 24.

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Henri Coandă (1886-1972)

Inventor and aerodynamics pioneer who built the experimental aircraft the Coandă-1910 and discovered the Coandă effect of fluid dynamics. Coandă built his first aeroplane for the Romanian army in 1905 and after graduating from the École Nationale Superieure d'Ingenieurs en Construction Aéronautique in Paris in 1909, built the Coandă-1910. This was designed as a jet-propelled aircraft. Coandă also used his work on the Coandă effect (the tendency of a fluid jet to be attracted to a nearby surface) to design further aircraft including a ‘flying saucer’.

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Thomas Lydwell Eckersley (1886-1959)

Theoretical physicist and engineer, known for his work on radio wave propagation. Eckersley studied engineering and mathematics, working for the National Physical Laboratory and (as a surveyor) for the Egyptian government. It was in the First World War that Eckersley, having joined the Royal Engineers, worked on wireless communications and radio direction finding. After the war, he joined the Marconi Company where he worked on radio wave propagation, especially the effect of the reflection of radio waves in the ionosphere. Eckersley was a Fellow of the Royal Society and was awarded the IET Faraday Medal in 1951.

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Walter Schottky (1886-1976)

Physicist, known for his theoretical work on solid-state physics and his invention of the screen-grid vacuum tube and the pentode. Schottky studied physics at the University of Berlin under Max Planck, and was a professor of physics at the University of Rostock. Schottky worked at the Siemens Research Laboratories between 1914-1919 and 1927-1958. While working at Siemens, Schottky also co-invented the ribbon microphone and the ribbon loudspeaker. The Schottky effect and the Schottky defect are named after him.

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Sir Barnes Neville Wallis (1887-1979)

Engineer and inventor, famous for his ‘bouncing bomb’. Wallis left school at the age of 17 to join the Thames Engineering Works as an apprentice, later transferring to a marine engineering firm. He joined Vickers (later BAC) in 1913 to work on aircraft design, where he invented the geodetic space frame for aircraft. During the Second World War, Wallis proposed a ‘bouncing’ bomb to attack large structures such as dams, and it was successfully used in Operation Chastise in 1943 against the Ruhr dams. Wallis’ work and Operation Chastise were the subject of the 1955 film The Dam Busters.

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John Logie Baird (1888-1946)

Scottish engineer, inventor and television pioneer. Baird gave the first working demonstration of mechanical television in London, in 1926. He also invented the first publicly demonstrated colour television system and the first purely electronic colour television picture tube. The Baird Television Development company, founded by Baird in 1927, was also the first to transmit television between London and New York, but in 1937 the system was dropped by the BBC in favour of the Marconi-EMI system.

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Igor Sikorsky (1889-1972)

Aeronautical engineer who designed the first multi-engine aircraft and the first mass-produced helicopter. Sikorsky trained as an aeronautical engineer in Paris and gained his pilot’s license in 1911. In 1912, he became Chief Engineer for the Russian Baltic Railroad Car Works, where he designed the world’s first four-engine aircraft, which he would convert into a four-engine bomber in the First World War. After the war, Sikorsky emigrated to the United States, where he taught aeronautical engineering and founded the Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation in 1923. His company would build Pan-American Airways’ ‘flying boats’ and the first mass-produced helicopter.

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Verena Holmes (1889-1964)

Inventor and mechanical engineer. Holmes began her engineering career in the First World War, where she worked on aircraft production. Before the end of the war she had completed her apprenticeship, and was awarded an engineering degree in 1922. In 1924 she became the first woman to be admitted to Associate Membership of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. During the Second World War Holmes was influential in setting up the Women’s Technical Service Register and devised a training course for women munitions workers. In 1946 she founded her own engineering firm.

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Percy Shaw (1890-1976)

Inventor and businessman who invented the ‘cat’s eye’ reflective road stud. Shaw worked as a labourer in the cloth mills from the age of thirteen, and then as an unskilled worker in engineering works. He began working as a road contractor in 1929, and worked on road repairs for the rest of his life. He patented the ‘cat’s eye’ reflector in 1934 as a road safety device, and set up Reflecting Roadstuds Co. in 1935. Shaw was awarded an OBE in 1965.

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Nikolaus Otto (1832-1891)

Engineer who developed the first practical 4-stroke internal combustion engine. Otto began designing small gas engines after an apprenticeship and brief career in commerce. He founded the company NA Otto & Cie with Eugen Langen in 1864. The Otto & Langen free piston atmospheric engine was awarded the Grand Prize at the Paris Exhibition in 1867. Otto went on to develop the Otto silent engine, the first practical 4-stroke engine to use in-cylinder compression.

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Sir Edward Victor Appleton (1892-1965)

Physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1947 for his work proving the existence of the ionosphere. The existence of a reflective layer in the atmosphere had been hypothesised by Oliver Heaviside and A E Kennelly, to explain the successful long-distance transmission of radio waves. Appleton conducted a series of experiments on variations in radio signal reception, proving the existence of the Kennelly-Heaviside layer and discovering the Appleton layer. Along with Douglas Hartree, Appleton established the magneto-ionic theory of the atmosphere. He was awarded the IET’s Faraday Medal in 1946 and was made an Honorary Fellow in 1952.

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Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt (1892-1973)

Radar pioneer who played a major role in the development and introduction of radar during the Second World War. Watson-Watt worked as a meteorologist before moving to the Radio Research Station in 1924. In 1933 he became Superintendent of the radio department at the National Physical Laboratory. In 1935, Watson-Watt, with his assistant Arnold Wilkins, wrote a report on detecting aircraft using radio. After conducting trials that year, he became head of the new Bawdsey Research Station, managing the establishment of the chain of radar stations known as Chain Home. Watson-Watt was knighted in 1942.

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Sir James Martin (1893-1981)

Engineer who co-founded the Martin-Baker aircraft company with Captain Valentine Baker. Martin established his own engineering firm in 1929, before forming Martin-Baker in 1933. In 1944, and after his co-founder had died on a test flight, Martin was asked by the Air Ministry to develop an ejection seat. In 1945 Martin-Baker carried out its first test with dummies, and in 1946 tested the system with a live pilot. The Martin-Baker company is now the largest supplier of ejection seats worldwide.

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Henry Ford (1863-1947)

Engineer who founded the Ford Motor Company and promoted the assembly line mass-production technique. Ford began his career as a machinist, but then moved to the Edison Illuminating Company where he became Chief Engineer in 1893. Ford carried out his own research into petrol engines and went on to design a number of cars. He is best known for the Model T Ford, which as the first affordable car in the US transformed the automobile industry and the history of transport.

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Dame Caroline Haslett (1895-1957)

Engineer and administrator, known for her work on promoting women in engineering and influencing government policy. After training in an engineering works, Haslett became the first secretary of the Women's Engineering Society in 1919. Between 1924 and 1956 she was the first director of the Electrical Association for Women. From 1946 to1954 she was the only woman member of the Council of the British Institute of Management and was chairman of the British Electrical Development Association 1953-4, the first time a woman had been appointed to that office. She was also the only woman member of the British Electricity Authority.

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Reginald Joseph Mitchell (1895-1937)

Aeronautical engineer who designed the Spitfire. Mitchell started as an apprentice at the locomotive engineering firm Kerr Stuart, studying engineering and mathematics at evening classes. He joined Supermarine in 1917 and was made Chief Designer in 1919 and Technical Director in 1927. Mitchell designed 24 aircraft between 1920 and 1936, including the seaplane S6.B which broke the world air speed record. In 1933, he began work on the Spitfire, which first flew in 1936. Mitchell died in 1937 at the age of 42. In 1942, his life and work were commemorated in the film The First of the Few.

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Amelia Earhart (1897-1937)

Aviation pioneer who was the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Earhart worked as an auxiliary nurse in the First World War, and took her first flight in 1920. She worked a series of odd jobs to fund flying lessons and in 1923 became the 16th woman to be awarded a pilot’s license by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI). Earhart completed her solo Atlantic flight in 1932 and went on to set a number of aviation records. Earhart was a founder member of the Ninety-Nines society for women pilots and was its first President.

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Katharine Burr Blodgett (1898-1979)

Physicist and research scientist who worked on monomolecular coatings at the General Electric Laboratory in Schenectady and developed the Longmuir-Blodgett film, a non-reflective coating used in ‘invisible’ glass. This glass was used in the film industry (including Gone with the Wind in 1939) and in submarine periscopes and spy cameras during the Second World War. Blodgett also invented the colour gauge, a method of measuring molecular coatings on glass. In 1951, she was awarded the Francis Garvan Medal from the American Chemical Society for her work.

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Earl Mountbatten of Burma (1900-1979)

Naval officer and statesman. In 1929, Mountbatten was placed in charge of wireless instruction at Portsmouth. Finding the teaching materials inadequate, he set up a drawing school to produce standardised drawings of every wireless circuit for the Admiralty Handbook. In 1931, Mountbatten was appointed Fleet Wireless Officer in the Mediterranean. In 1943, he became Supreme Allied Commander of the South East Asia Command. After the war, Mountbatten was appointed Viceroy of India, a post he held until independence in 1948, and in 1955 became First Sea Lord. He was President of the IERE in 1947 and 1961.

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Robert Dell (1900-1992)

Railway signal engineer. Dell was Chief Signal Engineer for the London Transport Board and designed the first Automatic Train Operation system on the Victoria Line in 1968. Dell also designed the network’s automatic fare collection and automatic ticket reading systems. Dell was a past President of the Institution of Railway Signal Engineers (IRSE).

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Enrico Fermi (1901-1954)

Physicist who built the world’s first nuclear reactor, also known for his contributions to nuclear physics. Fermi emigrated to the United States after the introduction of the Italian Racial Laws. He worked on the Manhattan Project and led the team that designed and built Chicago Pile-1. Fermi was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and the discovery of transuranic elements. The synthetic element fermium is named after him.

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Lord Hinton of Bankside (1901-1983)

Nuclear engineer who supervised the construction of the UK's nuclear power stations. Hinton began his career at Brunner Mond (later part of ICI) where he became Chief Engineer. During the Second World War, he became Deputy Director General of the Ministry of Supply. After the war, Hinton was appointed to the Atomic Energy Authority as Managing Director of the department responsible for the design and construction of most of Britain's major nuclear plants. In 1957, he became the first chairman of the CEGB. Hinton was a Fellow of the Royal Society and the first President of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

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Charles Lindbergh (1862-1954)

Aviator, inventor and author, known for his prize-winning solo flight from New York to Paris in 1927. Lindbergh started training as a mechanical engineer before leaving college to attend a flying school. He worked as a stunt pilot, wing walker and parachutist, as well as flying as an airmail pilot. After his solo flight, Lindbergh campaigned to promote aviation and the US Air Mail Service. He also co-invented a pump designed to improve the preservation of hearts during transplants.

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Paul Dirac (1902-1984)

Theoretical physicist, known for his work on quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. Dirac formulated the Dirac equation, which describes the behaviour of fermions, and predicted the existence of antimatter. In 1933, Dirac was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics with Erwin Schrödinger for his work on atomic theory. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, an Honorary Fellow of the American Physical Society and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics.

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Alan Dower Blumlein (1903-1942)

Electrical engineer, famous for his advances in telephony, instrumentation, sound recording and reproduction and radar. In 1929, Blumlein joined the Columbia Gramophone Company (later EMI) and while working for them took out 132 patents, including his famous stereo system. On the outbreak of the Second World War, Blumlein moved to radar. He was responsible for the circuitry on the H2S project, an airborne radar system that could guide an aircraft in flight, and it was during tests for this system that he died. News of his death was suppressed in order to prevent the discovery that Britain’s radar programme had suffered a setback.

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Amy Johnson (1903-1941)

Aviation pioneer and engineer who was the first woman pilot to fly solo from England to Australia. Johnson started flying lessons while working as a secretary, and was the first woman in the UK to be awarded a ground engineer’s license. Her record-breaking flights included London to Moscow, Moscow to Tokyo and London to Cape Town. Johnson was President of the Women’s Engineering Society from 1935-1937. On the outbreak of the Second World War, Johnson joined the Air Transport Auxiliary and was killed when her aeroplane crashed on a routine flight.

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Sir John Turton Randall (1905-1984)

Physicist who developed the cavity magnetron. Randall studied physics at the University of Manchester, then worked at the GEC Research Laboratories in Wembley from 1926-1937 on discharge lamp technology. In 1939, Randall was asked by the Admiralty to work on radar and, with Harry Boot, investigated the production of microwave radar devices. This led to their development of the cavity magnetron in 1940, a device which revolutionised radar and which was used in most radar sets from 1942. Randall moved to King’s College London in 1946, where he led the team which discovered the structure of DNA.

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Tommy Flowers (1905-1998)

Electrical engineer who designed Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer. In 1926, Flowers joined the telecommunications branch of the General Post Office (GPO), moving to the research station at Dollis Hill in 1930. During the Second World War, Flowers was asked to work with Alan Turing and Max Newman on codebreaking. Flowers co-designed a machine known as Heath Robinson to crack the Lorenz, or ‘Fish’, cipher. He then designed and built an electronic machine, Colossus, using vacuum tubes. After the war, Flowers returned to Dollis Hill where he worked on the first all-electronic telephone exchanges.

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Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992)

Computer scientist and Rear Admiral in the United States Navy, known for her development of the COBOL programming language. Hopper was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer in 1944, and invented the first compiler for a computer programming language. She is also credited with popularising the term ‘debugging’ for fixing computer glitches (inspired by an actual moth removed from the computer). Hopper was the first woman to be elected a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society and was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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Soichiro Honda (1906-1991)

Engineer and industrialist who founded Honda. Honda began his career as a teenager without formal qualifications, working as an apprentice mechanic before returning home to form his own car repair business at the age of 22. He went on to found a company which produced piston rings for Toyota. After the Second World War, he sold the company to Toyota and established the Honda Technical Research Institute. The business started making motorised bicycles and went on to manufacture motorcycles, eventually becoming a multinational company which produced the best-selling motorcycles in the world.

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Sir Frank Whittle (1907-1996)

Engineer who invented the jet engine. Whittle joined the Royal Air Force as an apprentice, after initially being rejected on health grounds. He was transferred to officer training and became a Pilot Officer in 1928 and a Flying Officer in 1930. Whittle was convinced of the need for better engines so that planes could fly at high altitude, and took out his first patent in 1929. In 1935 he formed Power Jets Ltd, who would develop the jet engine. The first successful test flight was in 1941, and the Meteor (developed with Rolls-Royce) first flew in combat in 1944.

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Masaru Ibuka (1908-1997)

Industrialist and engineer who co-founded the Sony Corporation with Akio Morita. Ibuka began his career at a film processing laboratory and served in the Japanese Navy in the Second World War. In 1946 he co-founded Sony, originally called Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation. The company obtained a license for transistor technology from Bell Labs and were one of the first to apply it to civil use. Ibuka was President of Sony from 1950 to 1971, and Chairman until 1976. Among other awards, Ibuka was awarded the IEEE Founders Medal and Commander First Class of the Royal Order of the Polar Star of Sweden.

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William Shockley (1910-1989)

Physicist who co-invented the transistor. Shockley obtained his PhD from MIT and then joined Bell Labs to work on solid-state devices. During the Second World War, he worked on radar and anti-submarine measures, for which he was awarded the Medal of Merit. In 1945, Bell Labs created the research group that would develop the transistor, for which Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1956. Shockley also invented the junction transistor in 1951, and in 1956 founded the company Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in California, the beginnings of ‘Silicon Valley’.

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Reginald Victor Jones (1911-1997)

Physicist and military intelligence expert who co-developed the 'Windows' radar countermeasure. Jones studied natural sciences at Oxford and joined the Royal Aircraft Establishment in 1936. In 1939, he became the first scientist to be assigned to the intelligence section of the Air Ministry and became Assistant Director of Intelligence (Science). Jones worked on radio and radar countermeasures and developed the ‘Windows’ radar countermeasure with Joan Curran. After the war, he moved to the University of Aberdeen as Chair of Natural Philosophy, working on instruments and measurement.

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Sir Frederic Calland Williams (1911-1977)

Engineer, known for his work on radar and early computing. Williams studied at the University of Manchester and the University of Oxford, returning to Manchester in 1936 to research electronics. During the Second World War, Williams joined the Telecommunications Research Establishment, working on the development of IFF, GEE and OBOE . After the war he became Chair of Electro-Technics at the University of Manchester, where he developed the Manchester Mark 1 and the Williams-Kilburn tube (an early memory device) with Tom Kilburn. Williams was awarded the IET Faraday Medal in 1972 and was knighted in 1976.

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Alan Turing (1912-1954)

Mathematician and computer scientist, known as the father of modern computing. Turing developed devices known as ‘Turing machines’, which can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm. They are the basis for all modern computing systems. During the Second World War, he worked at Bletchley Park, where he had a significant role in breaking the Enigma code by designing the ‘bombe’. After the war, Turing worked on the development of the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) at the National Physical Laboratory and in 1948 moved to Manchester where he worked on Manchester Mark 1 computer.

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Sir Maurice Wilkes (1913-2010)

Scientist who made fundamental contributions to computing. Wilkes studied mathematics and physics at St John’s College, Cambridge, completing his PhD on radio propagation. During the Second World War, he worked on radar at the Telecommunications Research Establishment, and in 1945 was appointed Director of the Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory (later the Computer Laboratory). Wilkes built the EDSAC computer, based on von Neumann’s EDVAC. He also developed the concepts of microprogramming and macros, along with other important programming concepts. Wilkes was a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering and first President of the British Computing Society.

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Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000)

Actress and inventor, known for her work on spread-spectrum communications. Lamarr (born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) starred in a number of popular films and became interested in applied science during her first marriage. She developed a number of inventions, including a traffic signal, but is best known for her frequency-hopping system developed with George Antheil during the Second World War. This system was designed to counteract the jamming of radio controlled missiles by creating an unpredictable signal. It was not adopted by the US Navy until 1962, but is now considered to be fundamental to modern spread-spectrum communications technology.

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Charles Spagnoletti (1832-1915)

Electrical engineer who was the first Superintendent of the Great Western Railway. Spagnoletti started work at the age of fourteen in the National Debt Office and worked with Alexander Bain on a printing telegraph. He joined the Electric Telegraph Company in 1847 and the Great Western Railway in 1855, where he devised the block signalling system used by Great Western and other railways. Spagnoletti also patented a number of signalling instruments and sang for William Preece’s demonstration of the Edison phonograph in 1878. He was President of the Society of Telegraph Engineers and Electricians in 1885.

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Claude Elwood Shannon (1916-2001)

Mathematician, known as the father of information theory. Shannon studied at the University of Michigan and MIT. His doctoral thesis set out the application of Boolean algebra and binary arithmetic to the electrical control of relays, thus founding the theory of digital computing. During the Second World War, Shannon worked on cryptography and met Alan Turing when Turing visited the US in 1943. After the war, Shannon published A Mathematical Theory of Communication, regarded as the beginning of information theory. Shannon also built a number of ground-breaking electronic devices and used information theory to win at blackjack in Las Vegas.

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Sir Godfrey Hounsfield (1919-2004)

Electrical engineer, known for his development of X-ray computed tomography (CT). Hounsfield was trained in electronics as an RAF reservist in the Second World War, and then attended Faraday House Electrical Engineering College. He joined EMI, where he helped to develop the EMIDEC 1100 computer. Hounsfield proposed a scanner which would take X-ray objects at angles to produce an image – the CT scanner. The first medical CT scan took place in 1971. Hounsfield was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Allan McLeod Cormack and the Hounsfield Unit (HU) of radiodensity is named after him.

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Sir Alastair Pilkington (1920-1995)

Engineer who invented the float glass production method. Pilkington served as an officer in the Royal Artillery in the Second World War and was captured in Crete, spending three years as a prisoner of war. After the war, Pilkington returned to Trinity College Cambridge to study mechanical science, before joining Pilkington (he was not related to the founders) in 1947. He developed a new method of manufacturing high-quality flat glass by floating the glass on molten metal: this was a considerable improvement on the previous plate glass method. He was Chairman of Pilkington from 1973-1995 and was knighted in 1970.

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Akio Morita (1921-1999)

Businessman who co-founded Sony. Morita studied physics at Osaka Imperial University. In the Second World War, Morita joined the Japanese Navy, where he met Masaru Ibuka. The two would found the company, later renamed Sony, supported by investments from Morita’s family. Sony produced the first transistor television, the Betamax video recorder (a year before the VHS system) and the Walkman, the first portable music device. Morita was awarded the RSA Albert Medal in 1982 and received an honorary KBE in 1993. In 1999, he was posthumously awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun.

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Jack Kilby (1923-2005)

Electrical engineer and co-inventor of the integrated circuit. Kilby studied electrical engineering before joining Texas Instruments. In 1948, as a new employee Kilby was not entitled to take holiday over the summer. Instead, he spent time working on the circuit design problem of how to join a number of components. Kilby mounted components on a single semiconductor, thus inventing the integrated circuit (this had also been done independently by Robert Noyce). Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for his research. He also co-invented the handheld electronic calculator and the thermal printer.

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Joseph F Engelberger (born 1925)

Electrical engineer and entrepreneur who developed the first industrial robot. Engelberger studied physics and electrical engineering before working as an automation engineer, designing controls. In 1956, Engelberger began development of an industrial robot, and he later founded Unimation Inc. The world's first industrial robot, the Unimate, was installed at General Motors in 1961.

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Theodore Harold Maiman (1927-2007)

Physicist and engineer, known for his development of the first working laser. Maiman worked in his father’s home electronics laboratory before leaving school at the age of 17 to join the National Union Radio Company as a junior engineer. Following National Service, Maiman studied engineering and physics at the University of Colorado and Stanford University, gaining his PhD in 1955. He then joined the Hughes Aircraft Company where he worked on the ruby maser (a microwave device) before developing a practical laser using a synthetic ruby. His working solid-state laser was demonstrated in 1960.

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Dame Stephanie Shirley (born 1933)

Businesswoman and IT pioneer. Shirley arrived in the UK as a Kindertransport refugee, and went to school in Oswestry where she studied mathematics at the boys’ school. She worked for the Post Office at Dollis Hill, working on early computers and writing code. Shirley founded Freelance Programmers (later Xansa) in 1962. She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and became a DBE in 2000. She was awarded the IET Mountbatten Medal in 1999.

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Sir Charles Kuen Kao (born 1933)

Electrical engineer, known for his work on fibre optic communications. Kao studied engineering at Woolwich Polytechnic and University College London. He worked for Standard Telecommunication Laboratories, where he started his research into fibre optics. In 1970, Kao founded the electronics department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CHUK), becoming Professor of Electronics, before moving to the United States to work for ITT where he was Director of Engineering. Kao was also Vice Chancellor of CHUK and a Visiting Professor at Imperial College. He was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009 for his work on fibre optic communication.

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Ray Dolby (1933-2013)

Engineer who invented the noise reduction system known as Dolby NR. Dolby worked on early video tape recording at Ampex before moving to the UK to study for a PhD at the University of Cambridge. He founded the Dolby Laboratories in London in 1965, where he invented the Dolby Sound System, a form of electronic filter. This system was first used by Decca Records. Dolby was awarded the IEEE Edison Medal in 2010 and in 2015 his work was recognised with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

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Gary Flandro (born 1934)

Aerospace engineer, known for his contributions to space flight. Flandro holds the Boling Chair of Excellence in Space Propulsion at the University of Tennessee Space Institute and is the Vice President and Chief Engineer at Gloyer-Taylor Laboratories (GTL). In 1998, Flandro was awarded the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for his contributions to the Voyager explorations.

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Karen Sparck Jones (1935-2007)

Computer scientist, known for her research on language processing and information retrieval. Jones studied history and worked as a teacher before moving into computer science. She worked at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory from 1974, becoming Professor of Computers and Information. Jones developed the inverse document frequency (IDF) weighting for information retrieval, used in Internet search engines. She was a Fellow of the British Academy and was awarded the BCS Lovelace Medal in 2007.

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Ratan Naval Tata (born 1937)

Businessman and former Chairman of the Tata Group. Tata studied architecture and structural engineering at Cornell and management at Harvard Business School. He joined Tata Sons in 1961, starting work on the shop floor operating the blast furnaces. He became Chairman in 1991, and under his leadership Tata acquired Tetley, Jaguar Land Rover and Corus. Tata was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2000 and an honorary knighthood in 2009. He is a member of the Council on Trade and Industry and is a judge for the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Tata is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

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Trevor Baylis (born 1937)

Inventor who invented the wind-up radio. Baylis, a keen swimmer who had worked as a stunt man, developed the radio after hearing about the need for broadcasting information in Africa on AIDS. Baylis patented a radio with a clockwork mechanism, and in 1994 his prototype was featured on the BBC programme Tomorrow's World. In 1996 his radio was awarded the BBC Design Award for Best Product and Best Design. Baylis also set up the Trevor Baylis Foundation to ‘promote the activity of Invention by encouraging and supporting Inventors and Engineers’.

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Sir Clive Sinclair (born 1940)

Entrepreneur and electronics pioneer who founded Sinclair Radionics. Sinclair became interested in electronics at an early age and left school at 18, selling mini electronics kits by post. He worked as an editor on Instrument Practice and launched Sinclair Radionics in 1961. In 1966 the company was renamed Science of Cambridge and by 1978 it sold microcomputer kits, and work had begun on the ZX80 computer. In 1982, Sinclair launched the ZX Spectrum. He went on to found Sinclair Vehicles, which manufactured the Sinclair C5. Sinclair was awarded a KBE in 1983.

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Baron Sainsbury of Turville (born 1940)

Businessman and philanthropist. Sainsbury joined his family’s business in 1963 and was Chairman from 1992-1997. In 1998 he was made a life peer and served as Minister of Science and Innovation in the House of Lords, a post he held until 2006. Sainsbury was elected Chancellor of the University of Cambridge in 2011. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and was made an Honorary Fellow of the IET in 2003.

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T V Ramachandran (born 1945)

Telecommunications pioneer who was the first CEO of Essar Cellphone (now part of Vodafone India Ltd), one of India’s earliest cellular service providers. Ramachandran led the launch of India’s largest capacity cellular network in 1995. He was made an IET Honorary Fellow in 2013. TV Ramachandran holds an MSc in Physics, with specialisation in Wireless & Electronics and is also a Fellow of The Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers (IETE).

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Stephen William Hawking (born 1942)

Theoretical physicist, author and cosmologist, known for his theory of cosmology which combined the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. In the 1980s, while Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, Hawking proposed a model of the universe with no beginning or end, the ‘no boundary’ model. He became famous for his popular science books, including A Brief History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell and A Briefer History of Time. Hawking is a Fellow of the Royal Society and was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Russian Special Fundamental Physics Prize.

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Burt Rutan (born 1943)

Aeronautical engineer who designed the Voyager aircraft and the SpaceShipOne spaceplane. Rutan was interested in aeronautical design as a child and flew his first solo flight in 1959. In 1974, he established the Rutan Aircraft Factory and in 1982 founded Scaled Composites. Rutan designed the Voyager, which in 1986 became the first plane to fly non-stop around the world without refuelling. His SpaceShipOne spaceplane won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004 for being the first private spacecraft to go into space twice within two weeks.

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Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)

Inventor, engineer and physicist, known for his pioneering work on AC systems. Tesla studied at the University of Graz and the University of Prague. He first worked with the Edison Company in Paris before emigrating to the United States to work with Thomas Edison in New York. Tesla soon struck out on his own and his patented AC induction motor and transformer were licensed by George Westinghouse, who also hired Tesla for a short time as a consultant. He also worked on early wireless and X-rays. The SI unit of magnetic flux density is named the tesla in his honour.

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Vint Cerf (born 1943)

Telecommunications pioneer, known as one of the ‘fathers of the Internet’ for his co-design of TCP/IP protocols. Cerf worked for the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and then moved to MCI where he was instrumental in developing the first commercial email system to be connected to the Internet. In 1992 he founded the Internet Society with Bob Kahn, and since 2005 has been Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google.

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Deng Nan (born 1945)

Physicist and politician. Nan is a former Executive Vice-President and Chief Executive Secretary of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST). She graduated from the Physics Department at Beijing University before moving to the Semiconductor Research Institute at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Nan was Vice Minister of the State Science and Technology Commission of the People's Republic of China from 1998-2004 and was made an Honorary Fellow of the IET in 2009.

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Sir James Dyson (born 1947)

Inventor and industrial designer, known for his invention of the the dual cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner. Dyson used the principle of cyclonic separation to create a vacuum cleaner that would not lose suction. He launched a prototype in 1983, but had great difficulty in interesting manufacturers and distributors in the UK. After winning the 1991 International Design Fair prize in Japan, Dyson set up his own company and the bagless Dual Cyclone became the fastest-selling vacuum cleaner ever made in the UK. Dyson is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

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Hermann Hauser (born 1948)

Entrepreneur and co-founder of Acorn Computers. Hauser was involved in the foundation of a number of technology companies, including Acorn Computers, Advanced RISC Machines (ARM), Active Book Company and Cambridge Network Limited. Hauser was voted the UK’s ‘Computer Personality of the Year’ in 1984 and became a patron of the Centre for Computing History in 2011. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and a Fellow of the Royal Society, and gave the IET’s Pinkerton Lecture in 2004.

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Steve Wozniak (born 1950)

Inventor, engineer and computer programmer who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs, and designed the Apple I. Wozniak was working for Hewlett-Packard when he met Jobs and the two worked on early computer design. Wozniak designed the Apple I in 1976, the same year that Apple Computers was founded. Wozniak left the company following an air crash in 1981, but returned in 1983 and remains an employee and a shareholder. He went on to develop other technologies including the universal remote control, and is known for his charitable activities.

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Ursula Martin (born 1953)

Computer scientist, known for her work on theoretical computer science. Martin studied mathematics at the University of Cambridge and obtained her PhD from the University of Warwick. She was the first female Professor of Computer Science in the UK and, in 1992, the first female Professor (of any subject) at the University of St Andrews. In 2003, Martin was seconded to the Women@CL project in Cambridge, which aimed to support women in computing. She was Vice Principal of Science and Engineering at Queen Mary University of London from 2005-2009. Martin is currently Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford.

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Steve Furber (born 1953)

Computer engineer who designed the BBC Micro and the ARM microprocessor. Furber studied mathematics and was awarded a PhD on the fluid dynamics of the Weis-Fogh principle. He then moved to Apple Computers where he designed the BBC Micro and the ARM microprocessor. Furber was appointed the ICL Professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Manchester in 1990, where he has worked on neural networks and asynchronous systems.

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Shuji Nakamura (born 1954)

Physicist and electronics engineer. Nakamura, with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2014 for the invention of the blue LED. Nakamura studied electronic engineering at the University of Tokushima before joining Nichia Corporation. At Nichia, he worked developed the first practical gallium nitride LED. The company directed him to stop research on the LED and Nakamura went on to develop the blue LED on his own. He moved to the University of California in 1999 where he is currently Professor of Materials. Nakamura also developed the blue laser diodes used in Blu-Ray discs.

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Anne G Shaw (1904-1982)

Expert in time and motion studies and author of The Purpose and Practice of Motion Study. Shaw worked with Lillian Gilbreth before moving to Metropolitan-Vickers where she set up a centre for efficiency studies. Shaw also set up a number of management training programmes, and was awarded a CBE for her services to industry.

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Bill Gates (born 1955)

Businessman, computer scientist and inventor who co-founded the Microsoft Company. Gates became interested in computer programming at school, being employed as a programmer while he was a teenager. In 1975, Gates dropped out of Harvard to form his own company with Paul Allen. After working on programming for the Altair 880, Microsoft was asked by IBM to work with the IBM PC, designing the PC DOS system. The first version of Microsoft Windows was launched in 1985. Gates was CEO of Microsoft until 2000 and Chairman until 2014. He founded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000.

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Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Businessman who co-founded Apple and Pixar. Jobs formed Apple with Steve Wozniak in 1976, to sell Wozniak’s Apple I computer. They would go on to develop the Macintosh in 1984. Jobs left the company in 1985, and founded the platform development company NeXT (later merged with Apple) and Pixar Animation Studios, which would produce the world’s first computer-generated animated film, Toy Story. Jobs re-joined Apple in 1997 and rescued it from bankruptcy, working with the designer Jonathan Ive on a ground-breaking range of products including the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad.

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Dame Sue Ion (born 1955)

Engineer, known for her role as advisor on nuclear power. Ion studied materials science and metallurgy at Imperial College and was Technical Director for BNFL. She was Vice-President of the Royal Academy of Engineering between 2002 and 2008 and was appointed Visiting Professor at Imperial College in 2006. Ion represents the UK on a number of international review and oversight committees for the nuclear sector including the Euratom Science and Technology Committee, and the US Department of Energy Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee. She was awarded a DBE in 2010 for services to science and engineering.

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Sir Tim Berners-Lee (born 1955)

Computer scientist, known for his invention of the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee began his career at the telecommunications company Plessey, but it was while working for CERN that he proposed using hypertext for information exchange. By 1991, he had combined hypertext with the internet to create the World Wide Web, and had developed the first web browser. Berners-Lee went on to found the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at MIT and the World Wide Web Federation. He was awarded the IET’s Mountbatten Medal in 1996.

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Er Meng Hwa (born 1956)

Electrical engineer, known for his research on communications. Professor Er Meng Hwa is Vice-President (International Affairs) and Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). After completing an engineering degree with the National University of Singapore in 1981, he went on to study for a PhD at the University of Newcastle. He joined NTU as a lecturer and was the founding Director of the Centre for Signal Processing. Professor Hwa is an Honorary Fellow of the IET.

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Muffy Calder (born 1958)

Computer scientist, known for her research on modelling and reasoning about the behaviour of complex software and biochemical systems, and for her role as a scientific advisor. Calder is Vice-Principal, Head of College of Science and Engineering and Professor of Formal Methods at the University of Glasgow, and was Chief Scientific Advisor to the Scottish government between 2012 and 2015. In 2015 she was appointed to the Council of the EPSRC. Calder is a Fellow of the IET.

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Carole Goble (born 1961)

Computer scientist and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. Goble is Principal Investigator of the myGrid, BioCatalogue and myExperiment projects and co-leads the Information Management Group. Goble’s research interests include Grid computing, the Semantic Web, medical informatics and bioinformatics. She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

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Naomi Climer (born 1964)

Communications engineer. After studying at Imperial College London, Climer trained as an Engineer at the BBC and has worked in technical roles in BBC Radio, BBC World Service and BBC News as well as at ITV and in local radio. Until March 2015, she was President of Sony’s new global division – Media Cloud Services, based in Los Angeles, USA, with a mission to develop cloud based production services for all parts of the media industry worldwide. Previously, Climer headed Sony’s B2B organisation in Europe. Naomi Climer is A Fellow of the IET and 2015-16 President – the Institution’s first female President.

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Sir Jonathan Ive (born 1967)

Designer, known for his design of Apple products including the iMac, iPhone and iPad. Ive studied industrial design at Newcastle Polytechnic and first worked for Apple as a consultant on the PowerBook, joining the company full-time in 1992. His first Apple design was the iMac and would be followed by the iPod, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. He was the first winner of the Design Museum’s Designer of the Year award and received a National Design Award in 2007 for the iPhone. Ive is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and was awarded a KBE in 2012.

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Elon Musk (born 1971)

Engineer, inventor and businessman who founded the companies PayPal, SpaceX and SolarCity, and CEO of Tesla Motors. Musk became interested in computer programming as a schoolboy in South Africa, then emigrated to study physics and economics at Queen’s University, Ontario and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1995, Musk founded the software company Zip 2 with his brother, which was later sold to Compaq. In 1999, he co-founded X.com, later renamed PayPal, which was sold to eBay in 2002. In the same year, Musk founded SpaceX, which manufactures space exploration vehicles. He joined Tesla Motors in 2004, becoming CEO in 2008.

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Roma Agrawal (fl. 2015)

Structural engineer who was awarded Young Structural Engineer by the Institution of Structural Engineers in 2011 and was an IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year finalist in 2012. Agrawal has a degree in physics and an MSc in structural engineering, and is currently an Associate Structural Engineer at WSP Group, where she worked on the Shard. She also campaigns to encourage young people to go into STEM careers.

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Mark Zuckerburg (born 1984)

Computer programmer and internet pioneer, who co-founded Facebook. Zuckerberg launched Facebook at Harvard in 2004, where he was studying psychology and computer science. Originally for Harvard students only, the site was rolled out to other universities before growing into a worldwide network. Zuckerberg is now Chairman and Chief Executive of Facebook. In 2013, he launched Internet.org, an initiative to connect 5 billion people to the internet.

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A F Harvey Prize Winner 2015

The IET A F Harvey Prize is an annual research prize awarded by the IET in the fields of medical, microwave, radar and laser engineering. The 2015 A F Harvey Prize was awarded to Yang Hao, Professor of Antennas and Electromagnetics at Queen Mary University of London. He is active in a number of areas, including computational electromagnetics, microwave metamaterials and transformation optics, antennas and radio propagation for body centric wireless networks, active antennas for millimeter/sub-millimeter applications and photonic integrated antennas. Professor Hao was elected as a Fellow of the ERA Foundation in 2007, a Fellow of the IET in 2010 and a Fellow of the IEEE in 2013.

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IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year Awards Winner 2015

The YWE Award was launched in 1978 as the Girl Technician of the Year, and was changed to the Young Woman Engineer of the Year in 1988. The award was originally sponsored by the Caroline Haslett Memorial Trust, which provided scholarships and other educational opportunities for women seeking or already pursuing careers in electronic, electrical or mechanical engineering. It is now funded by the IET. The 2015 Young Woman Engineer was Orla Murphy. She works as an acoustic and audio engineer at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), where her small team in the infotainment department is tasked with improving the vehicles’ listening experience.

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Faraday Medal Winner 2015

The IET Faraday Medal is the most prestigious of the IET Achievement Medals and is awarded either for notable scientific or industrial achievement in engineering or for conspicuous service rendered to the advancement of science, engineering and technology, or for lifetime achievement in science, engineering or technology. The 2016 Faraday Medallist was Professor Kees Schouhamer Immink. Professor Immink is founder and president of Turing Machines Inc. and is regarded as one of the most prolific inventors in the field of consumer electronics of the late 20th Century.

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IET Present Around the World Winner 2015

Present Around the World is the IET’s global competition for young professionals and students within engineering to develop and showcase their presentation skills. The 2015 winner was Robert Mayall with a presentation on 'Ending the Guessing Game for Infectious Patients'.

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IET First Lego League Winners 2016

The FIRST® LEGO® League is a global science and technology challenge for teams of students, to encourage an interest in real world issues and develop key skills that are crucial for their future careers. The students work together to explore a given topic and to design, build and program an autonomous LEGO robot to solve a series of missions. The IET Lego League Winners for 2016 were the West Linton Wasps, a primary school team from the Scottish Borders.

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IET Faraday Challenge Winner 2015

The IET Faraday Challenge Days are one day STEM activities designed for six teams of six students. IET Faraday Challenge Days give students the opportunity to research, design and make prototype solutions to genuinely tough engineering problems. At each event teams compete to win a prize for themselves and a trophy for their school. The Faraday Challenge winner for 2015 was Ulverston Victoria High School.

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Thomas Parker (1843-1915)

Electrical engineer described by Lord Kelvin as ‘the Edison of Europe’. Parker left school at the age of 10 to work for the Coalbrookdale Company. At age 20 he prepared the mould patterns for the Albert Edward Railway Bridge, one of the last and largest of the UK’s cast iron bridges. Parker took out over 50 patents, including one for Coalite smokeless fuel, and his numerous achievements included the electrical system for the Liverpool Overhead Railway and the ‘Oxford’ system for DC power distribution. He was the co-founder of Elwell-Parker Company and the Consulting Engineer and a Director for the Metropolitan Railway.

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