List of British engineers

Isambard Kingdom Brunel whose works included the Great Western Railway and the Great Eastern

This is a historical list of British engineers .

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by editing the page to add missing items, with references to reliable sources.

List

• John Allen (born 1928), engineer and plasma physicist
• James Atkinson (1846–1914), inventor of the Atkinson cycle internal combustion engine ^[1]
• George Frederick Armstrong (1842–1900), sanitation engineer and academic ^[2]
• William Armstrong (1810–1900), inventor of the hydraulic accumulator and breech-loading, rifled artillery ^[3]
• Hertha Ayrton (1854–1923), pioneered the science of electric arcs and ripples in sand and water. ^[4]
• Charles Baird (1766–1843), managed a company which built steam-powered machinery in Saint Petersburg, including Russia's first steamboat ^[5]
• Edward Barlow (1639–1719), inventor of the repeating clock ^[6]
• John Bell (1747–1798), inventor of various military and nautical devices, including a gyn and a petard ^[7]
• Edwin Beard Budding (1796–1846), inventor of the lawnmower ^[8]
• Jenny Body, aerospace engineer and former president of the Royal Aeronautical Society ^[9]
• Matthew Boulton (1728–1809), partner in the steam engineering manufacturing firm Boulton and Watt, and inventor of a steam-driven coin press ^[10]
• James Brindley (1716–1772), pioneering engineer of canals and aqueducts ^[11]
• Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859), noted, among other achievements, for constructing the Clifton Suspension Bridge and the Great Western Railway ^[12]
• Henry Chilver (1926–2012), expanded Cranfield Institute of Technology by focusing on the practical application of knowledge ^[13]
• Victoria Drummond (1894–1978), marine engineer who served at sea as an engineering officer in the British Merchant Navy and received awards for bravery under enemy fire. ^[14]
• Gertrude Lilian Entwisle (1892–1961), electrical engineer known for her work on designing DC motors and exciters and one of the founding members of the Women's Engineering Society. ^[15]
• Nigel Gresley (1876–1941), chief engineer of the London and North Eastern Railway who invented the Gresley conjugated valve gear ^[16]
• Holt Samuel Hallett (1841 – 11 November 1911), pioneer railway engineer in Burma ^[17]
• Caroline Haslett (1895–1957), electrical engineer who oversaw important requirements for electrical installations in post-war Britain ^[18]
• Oliver Heaviside (1850–1925), electrical engineer, mathematician, and physicist who developed the transmission line theory and vectorized Maxwell's equations, among many other things. ^[19]
• Christopher Hinton (1901–1983), chief engineer at ICI who worked on the first nuclear power plant, Calder Hall ^[20]
• Peggy Hodges (1921–2008), communications and systems engineer who worked on guided missile technology at GEC Marconi ^[21]
• Sue Ion (born 1955), expert advisor on the nuclear power industry ^[22]
• Andrew Meikle (1719–1811), inventor of an innovative mechanical threshing machine ^[23]
• Rachel Mary Parsons (1885–1956), engineer and advocate for women's employment rights, was the founding president of the Women's Engineering Society in Britain.
• Lewis Paul (died 1759), inventor of spinning and weaving machines ^[24]
• Dorothée Pullinger (1894–1986), pioneering automobile engineer and businesswoman ^[25]
• Harry Ricardo (1885–1974), researcher and developer of early internal combustion engines
• Margaret Dorothea Rowbotham (1883–1978), engineer in the automobile, munitions and electrical sectors, and champion of women's employment in professional engineering ^[26]
• Dorothy Rowntree, first woman graduate in engineering from the University of Glasgow and the first woman graduate in naval architecture in UK ^[27]
• Evelyn Roxburgh (1896–1973), first woman to gain a diploma in electrical engineering in Scotland. ^[28]
• Thomas Savery (c.1650–1715), first person to patent a steam-powered device ^[29]
• Beatrice Shilling (1909–1990), inventor of the "Miss Shilling's orifice", a critical component that prevented engine stall in the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines of the Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire fighters. ^[30]
• Dorothy Spicer (1908–1946), aviator and the first woman to gain an advanced qualification in aeronautical engineering ^[31]
• Richard Trevithick (1771–1833), inventor of a high-powered steam engine ^[32]
• Claude Hamilton Verity (1880–1949), inventor of the Veritiphone, one of the earliest methods of synchronisation of sound and film. ^[33]
• Frank Whittle (1907–1996), credited with single-handedly inventing the turbojet engine. ^[34]

References

1. Hayes, John G.; Goodarzi, G. Abas (2018). "Chapter 5. Conventional and hybrid powertrains". Electric Powertrain: Energy Systems, Power Electronics and Drives for Hybrid, Electric and Fuel Cell Vehicles. John Wiley & Sons. p. 132. ISBN   9781119063667.
2. Institute, Iron Steel (1900). "Obituary. George Frederick Armstrong". The Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute. LVIII (II): 387–388.
3. Hall 2008, p. 8.
4. Ayrton, Hertha (21 October 1910). "The Origin and Growth of Ripple-Mark". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. 84 (571): 285–310. Bibcode:1910RSPSA..84..285A. doi: 10.1098/rspa.1910.0076 . JSTOR   93297.
5. Chrimes, Mike (2002). "BAIRD, Charles". In Skempton, A. W.; Chrimes, M.M.; Cox, R.C.; Cross-Rudkin, P.S.M.; Rennison, R.W.; Ruddock, E.C. (eds.). A Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in Great Britain and Ireland: 1500-1830. Thomas Telford. pp. 30–31. ISBN   9780727729392.
6. Stephen, Leslie (1885). "BARLOW, alias Booth, EDWARD". Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 3. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 219–220.
7. Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney, eds. (1908). "Bell, John (1747-1798)". Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 2 (2nd ed.). London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 167.
8. "Blue plaque for lawn-mower inventor". BBC News. 23 April 2015. Retrieved 25 March 2018.
9. "| Royal Society". royalsociety.org. Retrieved 28 September 2019.
10. Thackeray, Frank W.; Findling, John E., eds. (2012). "Matthew Boulton (1728-1809)". Events That Formed the Modern World. ABC-CLIO. pp. 223–224. ISBN   9781598849011.
11. Ben-Menahem, Ari (2009). Historical Encyclopedia of Natural and Mathematical Sciences. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 1364. ISBN   9783540688310.
12. Parkes, Pamela (23 March 2018). "The engineering giant with 'short man syndrome'". BBC News. Retrieved 25 March 2018.
13. McKeown, Pat (25 July 2012). "Lord Chilver obituary". The Guardian . Retrieved 25 March 2018.
14. Drummond, Cherry (1994). The Remarkable Life of Victoria Drummond – Marine Engineer. London: Institute of Marine Engineers. ISBN   978-0-907206-54-5.
15. Hardwich, Isabel Helen (Autumn 1954). "Retirement of Miss Gertrude L Entwisle AMIEE". The Woman Engineer. 7 no, 14: 3–9 – via Institution of Engineering and Technology.
16. Hall 2008, p. 88.
17. Unknown (January 1912). "Obituary. Holt Samuel Hallett, Died 1911" . Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers. 187 (1912): 324–325. doi:10.1680/imotp.1912.16843. ISSN   1753-7843.
18. "Post-War Building Studies No. 11 Electrical Installations", HMSO, London 1944
19. J., Nahin, Paul (2002). Oliver Heaviside: the life, work, and times of an electrical genius of the Victorian age (Johns Hopkins paperback ed.). Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN   978-0801869099. OCLC   47915995.
20. Hall 2008, p. 101.
21. "The Woman Engineer". www.theiet.org. Retrieved 1 August 2018.
22. "Woman's Hour Power List, Woman's Hour - Dame Sue Ion". BBC Radio 4. Retrieved 25 March 2018.
23. Treasure, G. R. R. (2002). "Andrew Meikle". Who's who in Early Hanoverian Britain, 1714-1789. Stackpole Books. p. 249. ISBN   9780811716437.
24. Hendrickson, Kenneth E. III (2014). "Paul, Lewis (D. 1759)". The Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution in World History. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 710–711. ISBN   9780810888883.
25. Clarsen, Georgine (1 September 2003). "'A fine university for women engineers': a Scottish munitions factory in world war I". Women's History Review. 12 (3): 333–356. doi:10.1080/09612020300200363. ISSN   0961-2025. S2CID   144837053.
26. Baker, Nina C. (12 July 2018). Rowbotham, Margaret Dorothea (1883–1978), engineer. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.110231.
27. "5: Dorothy Rowntree". Magnificent Women. Retrieved 17 June 2021.
28. "From our past". Heriot-Watt University. Retrieved 2 June 2021.
29. Jenkins, Rhys (1971). Links in the history of engineering and technology from Tudor times . Freeport, N.Y., Books for Libraries Press. ISBN   978-0-8369-2167-0 . Retrieved 17 July 2025– via The Internet Archive.
30. Price, Alfred. (1986). The Spitfire Story: Second edition. London: Arms and Armour Press Ltd. ISBN   978-0-85368-861-7.
31. Fahie, Michael (23 September 2004). "Spicer [married name Pearse], Dorothy Norman (1908–1946), aviator and aeronautical engineer". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 1 (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/67672.(Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
32. James, Ioan (2010). "Chapter 3: From Trevithick to Sadi Carnot". Remarkable Engineers: From Riquet to Shannon. Cambridge University Press. p. 33. ISBN   9781139486255.
33. Lovette, Frank H.; Watkins, Stanley. "Twenty years of talking movies". Tell Telephone Magazine. 1946. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
34. Evans, R.L. "Whittle Power Jet Papers". Cambridge Digital Library. University Cambridge. Retrieved 5 September 2020.

• Hall, Carl (2008), A Biographical Dictionary of People in Engineering, vol. 1, Purdue University Press, ISBN   9781557534590