HONORARY FELLOWS 1981-2000

George Jefferson was born on 26 March 1921.  He was educated at Dartford Grammar School and Woolwich Polytechnic, where he was awarded an honours degree in engineering.

He trained as an engineering apprentice in the Royal Ordnance Factory at Woolwich, and in the Second World War, between 1942 and 1945, he served with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC), the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME), anti-aircraft command, and, later, in the Armaments Design Department at Fort Halstead.

After the War he joined the staff of the Ministry of Supply at Fort Halstead, and then, in 1952, English Electric’s Guided Weapons Division. He progressed here to become Deputy Chief Engineer and then Director of the English Electric Aviation Company Ltd. When the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) was formed in 1960 following the government-enforced merger of English Electric Aviation with Vickers Armstrong (Aircraft), the Bristol Aeroplane Company and Hunting Aircraft, he joined BAC. He was successively Director and Chief Executive, and Chairman and Managing Director of guided weapons and he was also appointed as a member of the BAC Board.

In 1980 he was appointed Chairman of British Telecom (BT), and was the architect of its privatization in 1984. Originally appointed for a five year period, he eventually retired as Chairman of BT in 1987, being replaced by Ian Valance.

At the time of his appointment as Chairman of BT he was a director of a number of overseas companies connected with British Aerospace. He was also a member of the National Enterprise Board, the National Defence Industries Council, and the Council of the Society of British Aerospace Companies, as well as a Director of Babcock International Ltd.

Jefferson was made a CBE in 1969 and was knighted in 1981. He holds a Fellowship of Engineering, and is a Fellow of the City and Guilds Institution, the Royal Aeronautical Society, the British Institute of Management, and the Royal Society of Arts.

He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1981.

Robert Andrew Inskip was born on 8 October 1917 at 10 Eaton Square, London.  He was the only child of Thomas Walker Hobart Inskip, First Viscount Caldecote, barrister, politician, and Lord Chief Justice (1940–46), and his wife, Lady Augusta Helen Elizabeth, eldest daughter of David Boyle, Seventh Earl of Glasgow. He was educated at Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge, graduating with first class honours in mechanical sciences in 1939.

Robert Lickley was born in 1912 in Dundee and was educated at Edinburgh University. He graduated with a degree in civil engineering and was awarded a Caird Scholarship in 1932 to study aeronautics at Imperial College.

His career began at Hawker Aircraft Ltd at Kingston-on-Thames. He worked in the Stress office and was involved in stressing on the prototype Hurricane. During the Second World War he was appointed as Chief Project Engineer working on the development of the Typhoon and the Tempest.

After the war he took a professorship with the College of Aeronautics at Cranfield and devoted his time to raising the standard of aircraft design education. He served on a number of committees and performed consultancy work. In 1951 an opportunity arose to join the Fairey Company as Chief Engineer and Lickley quickly progressed through the company to become Managing Director. As well as overseeing the development of the Rotodyne, the first large compound helicopter, Lickley was also involved in the atomic energy work of the company. He served on the Board of Atomic Power Constructions which built the Trawsfynydd Power Station.

During the 1960s Lickley left Fairey and joined Hawker Siddeley Aviation. There he managed the supply of the Harrier to the US Marine Corps. In later years he was a key member of the Rolls Royce Support Staff at the National Enterprise Board.

He became a member of the IMechE in 1950, was elected to Council in 1964 and became President in 1971. From 1981-82 he served as President of the Institution of Production Engineers. He was bestowed a fellowship from the Royal Aeronautical Society and received honorary doctorates from the universities of Edinburgh and Strathclyde. He died in 1998.

Jean Bouley was born on 26 September 1925 at Montauban, Landes, France.  He was educated at the École Polytechnique, graduating with a diploma in engineering in 1944.

He began his career in the French railways in 1947 when he was attached to the Motive Power and Rolling Stock Department of the Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français – the SNCF. After the usual initial training period he was made shed master at Capdenac in south-western France, and then at Paris Ivry. He then moved to the railway workshops at Vitry, and his career continued in the districts of Brive and Limoges, and at the workshop in Bordeaux.

He then moved to the Carriage and Wagon sub-division of the south west region of the SNCF, where he played a significant role in the preparation for the first running of the Capitole Rapide train at a speed of 200km/h in 1966. He was subsequently Chief Engineer for Maintenance at the SNCF Motive Power and Rolling Stock headquarters, and he was appointed Deputy Manager in 1972 and then Director in 1974. In these senior roles he was responsible for the organization of the work in the department, but above all he advanced the concept and the construction of new motive power and rolling stock at one of the most important periods in the modernization which the French railways have known. He will be forever linked to the development and introduction of the Train à Grande Vitesse – the TGV. He remained as Director of Motive Power and Rolling Stock until 1980, leaving SNCF in 1981.

He also took on important international responsibilities, becoming Chairman of the 5th Commission (Rolling Stock and Motive Power) of the International Union of Railways (UIC). The UIC had been established in 1922 to further the standardization and improvement of railway equipment and operational procedures with particular regard to international traffic. He was appointed Secretary General of the UIC in January 1981, in which position he remained until 1990.

He was an Officer of the Legion of Honour, and he was a founder member, in 1987, of the Association for the History of Railways in France. He had a long association with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, presenting papers in 1977 and in 1982, and he opened the Railway Division conference at York in 1982, the same year he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution.

He died in 1998.

Desmond Carter was born in Dublin in 1906.  He was educated at King Edward VII School, at Lytham, followed by the Manchester College of Technology.  He followed this with a five-year apprenticeship with Crossley Brothers Ltd., Manchester, the firm with which he was to spend the remainder of his working life.

Following his apprenticeship he spent a six month placement in Germany investigating an early gas turbine project, as well as visiting the works of a number of Continental firms.  He returned the Manchester to take up a position as design engineer.  He was responsible for the design of Crossley’s first marine Diesel engine, of a two-cycle direct-reversing type.

Over time, Carter became Chief Marine Engineer, Works Manager of a Branch Works, Chief Engineer of the Company and eventually, Director and Chief Engineer, responsible for the whole of the company’s products.  In 1951 he became Managing Director, and in 1957 Chairman and Managing Director.

He retired in 1962, and died in 1990.

Robert Telford was born on 1 October 1915 in Liverpool.  He first attended Quarry Bank School.  In 1929 his family moved to Staffordshire, and he began to attend Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Tamworth. He won a scholarship to Christ’s College, Cambridge, gaining an MA in civil engineering in 1934.

He joined Marconi’s Wireless and Telegraph Company in 1937 as a management trainee. He was subsequently employed by the company in various capacities, both at home and overseas, including manager of the Hackbridge Works in 1940 and managing director of Marconi in Brazil from 1946 to 1950. On his return to the UK, following the take-over by English-Electric of the UK-based Marconi Company, he was made assistant general manager.  He became general works manager in 1953 general manager from 1961 to 1965.

When the company merged with GEC in 1968 he was appointed Managing Director of GEC–Marconi Electronics, retiring from this post in 1984. In 1981 he became Chairman of The Marconi Company Ltd, and then, in 1982, Chairman of Marconi Avionics Ltd as well. He was appointed Life President of The Marconi Company in 1984 – an honour only previously bestowed upon members of the founding Marconi family.

He served from 1968 as a member of the Engineering Industry Training Board. He was a member of the council of the Industrial Society, and Chairman of the Avionics Requirements Board of the Department of Trade and Industry. He was President of the Electronic Engraving Association and a member of the Commonwealth Engineers Council. He served on the Research and Development Advisory Group of the European Community, and on the Council of Senior Advisors to the International Association of University Presidents. He was President of the Institution of Production Engineers 1982–83, and was instrumental in the setting up of the Engineering Council. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1983.

He was appointed CBE in 1967, and was created Knight Bachelor in 1978. He has honorary degrees from the universities of Salford, Cranfield, Hatfield, Bath, Aston, Birmingham, and Bradford. He was made a Freeman of the City of London in 1984, and was a Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Essex. In 1992 he was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci Medal.

He was married twice, and had seven children, four from his first marriage and three from his second.

He died on 10 March 2008 at the age of 92.

Sze-yuen Chung was born on 3 November 1917 in Hong Kong.  He was educated at St Paul’s College, and in 1936 went to study civil engineering at St John’s University, Shanghai. Due to the second Sino-Japanese war he had to return to Hong Kong without completing his degree, but subsequently studied mechanical engineering at Hong Kong University and gained a first class honours degree in 1941. He worked initially as a mechanical engineer for Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock, and in 1948 was awarded a scholarship to the University of Sheffield, where he earned his doctorate.  

He returned to Hong Kong in 1951, spending a year working as a mechanical engineer before establishing himself as a consulting engineer, with his own company, Chung Sze Yuen Engineering. In 1956 he was made General Manager of Sonca Industries, becoming Managing Director in 1960 and Chairman in 1977.

He played a major role in promoting industrial and economic growth in Hong Kong from the 1960s onwards. He was a member of the Federation of Hong Kong Industries from 1966 to 1970, served on the Hong Kong Industrial Design Council from 1969 to 1975, and on the Hong Kong Productivity Council between 1974 and 1976. He was a member of the Hong Kong–Japan Business Cooperation Committee (1983–88), and the Hong Kong–US Economic Cooperation Committee (1984–88).

He was a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council from 1965 to 1978, a member of the Hong Kong Executive Council from 1972 to 1988, and from 1992 to 1997 he was an advisor to the government of the People’s Republic of China on Hong Kong affairs. In 1996 and 1997 he was a member of the Chinese government’s preparatory committee for the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), and he was the first Convenor of the HKSAR Executive Council from 1997 to 1999.

He was the founding Chairman of Hong Kong Polytechnic and of the City Polytechnic, Hong Kong, and he served on the Hong Kong Hospital Authority from 1991 to 1995. He was President of the Engineering Society of Hong Kong in 1960 to 1961, and was Founding President of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences from 1994 to 1997.

He has honorary degrees from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University, Hong Kong Polytechnic, and the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong. He has received many awards, including the Defence Medal (1948), the Silver Jubilee Medal (1977), the Gold Medal of the Asian Productivity Organization, the HKSAR Grand Bauhinia Medal, and the Japanese Order of Sacred Treasure. He was created OBE in 1968, CBE in 1975, and GBE in 1989 and he was knighted in 1978. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Engineering, and was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1983.

In 1942 he married Nancy Cheung, and they had one son and two daughters.

Beryl Catherine Platt was born on 18 April 1923 at Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex.  She was the daughter of Ernest and Dorothy Myatt.  She attended Westcliff High School and Girton College, Cambridge, where she studied mechanical sciences, specializing in aeronautics and graduating in 1943.

Her first appointment was in the experimental flight test department at Hawker Aircraft where she worked on the development of the Hurricane and Typhoon fighters. She left Hawkers in 1946 to join the R&D Department of the newly-formed British European Airways, where she was mostly concerned with the safety of the aircraft being developed for passenger service.

She was elected to Essex County Council in 1965, and in 1969 became Chairman of the Further Education Committee, and of the education Committee in 1971. She became Chairman of the Finance Committee, and was Vice-Chairman of Essex County Council in 1981, being created a life peer the same year.

She has done much to further the involvement of girls in science and technology, being a member of the Advisory Committee on Women’s Employment between 1984 and 1988, and Patron of Women into Science and Engineering from 1995. She is a member of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, serving four terms between 1982 and 2007, and she was Vice President of the Parliamentary Scientific Committee from 1996 to 2000.  She was Chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission from 1983 to 1988, at the same time also serving on the European Communities Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men.

She also served on many other bodies and committees, including the Chelmsford Engineering Society, Cambridge University Engineers Association, and the Association for Science Education. She was Vice President of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and technology (UMIST) from 1985 to 1992, and Chancellor of Middlesex University from 1993 to 2000. In 1989 he was made a Fellow of Manchester Polytechnic and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She has honorary degrees from many universities, including Salford, Cranfield, Nottingham, Sheffield, Anglia Ruskin, Southampton, Essex, Bradford, Brunel, Loughborough, and the Open University.

She is an Honorary Fellow of the Polytechnic of Wales, of UMIST, of the Women’s Engineering Society, of the Institute of Structural Engineers, and of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and in 1984 was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

In 1949 she married Stewart Sydney Platt, and they had one son and one daughter.

She lives at Writtle, near Chelmsford, in Essex.

Hugh Ford was born in 1913, the son of a freelance inventor, and was educated at Northampton School. At the age of eighteen he began an apprenticeship in the locomotive works of the Great Western Railway. In 1934 he was awarded a Whitworth Scholarship which enabled him to attend the City and Guilds College, graduating with a first class honours and gaining the Bramwell Medal for achieving first place in the mechanical engineering list. He later gained a PhD from City and Guilds College for his work on heat transfer and fluid flow problems.

During the Second World War Sir Hugh joined Imperial Chemical Industries Alkali Division in Cheshire as a Research Engineer. He worked on commercial high pressure polyethylene plant and the design of a pilot plant for the manufacture of chlorinated polyethylenes. Three years later he became Chief Technical Officer to the British Iron and Steel Federation and progressed to the position of Head of the Mechanical Working Division of the British Iron and Steel Research Association. His research in to the operation and characteristics of cold strip mills gained him the IMechE’s Thomas Hawksley Gold Medal in 1948. His work eventually led to the development of automatic gauge control which became popular worldwide. By 1947 he had gained experience in establishing new laboratories, at Sketty Hall and the Hoyle Street, Sheffield laboratories of BSRIA.

A brief period as Technical Director of Paterson Engineering, waterworks engineers, was followed by a Readership in Applied Mechanics at Imperial College (previously City and Guilds College). A year later he received the DSc(Eng) of the University of London. He established a consulting practice, Sir Hugh Ford and Associates Ltd, working as Chairman to link the fields of academia and industry, and joined several companies as director.

In 1951 he became Professor of Applied Mechanics and oversaw the rebuilding and re-equipment of the Mechanical Engineering Department. During this period he worked on applied mechanics research and teaching, plasticity theory and metal working processes. He worked across numerous fields including polymer engineering, biomechanics, high pressure technology, fatigue and fracture mechanics. He was invited to join the Research Grants Committee of DSIR which later became the Science Research Council. In 1968 he became the first Chairman of the Council’s Engineering Board, promoting the Total Technology concept, a scheme for postgraduate training linked to management as well as technical concerns. In 1966 he became Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Head of Department at Imperial College. In 1978 he was made Pro-Rector and retired in 1980.

Sir Hugh Ford’s professional achievements are numerous. He has been President of the Institutes of Metals and Sheet Metal Engineering and in 1983 was awarded the James Alfred Ewing Medal of the Institution of Civil Engineers for his contribution to engineering research. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1967. He was a founder member of the Fellowship of Engineering and was a vice-President from 1981-84. In academia he received honorary doctorates from Salford, Queen’s (Belfast), Aston, Bath and Sheffield universities and was a Fellow of Imperial College. He was knighted in 1975.

He joined the IMechE council in 1962, serving until 1982, and became involved in the Applied Mechanics Group, the Engineering Policy Review Committee, the Council Awards Committee and the Technical Board. He worked on the Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science and founded the Materials Forum, chairing from 1979 to 1984. In 1984 he became an Honorary Fellow of the IMechE. The Hugh Ford Management lectures are held annually by the IMEchE’s Management Group. 

Professor Sir Hugh Ford died on 28 May 2010 at the age of 96.

James Gordon Dawson was born in 1916 in Scotland and was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and Aberdeen University. He was the son of James Dawson, an educationalist who transformed the country’s education system. As a result of these changes Dawson was able to study engineering at university without having gained scientific Highers.

At university he studied electrical and mechanical engineering, and was awarded an HND prize by the IMechE in 1937. On graduating in 1938 he gained a pupilship with Rolls-Royce. He progressed to a position as a technical assistant in the Experimental Test Department. He worked on high performance testing and in 1942 was sent to run a new test department at Sinfin. The experience he gained at Sinfin led to an appointment as Chief Engineer at the Shell Aero Engine Laboratory at Thornton.

In 1955 Dawson moved to join Perkins based in Peterborough overseeing the modernization of the company’s product range and the reorganization of the engineering department. He worked on road trials of the differentially supercharged diesel engine and was awarded the IMechE’s Akroyd Stuart and Gresham Cooke prizes. After Perkins he moved to directorships at Dowty Group and then Zenith Carburettor Co.

Dawson joined the Institution of Automobile Engineers in 1939 and transferred to membership of the IMechE in 1943. He was a founder member of the IMechE’s automobile division and was also involved in running the Qualifications, Technical and Finance Boards.  He became a Fellow in 1957 and was elected President in 1979. He died in 2007.

Jack Birks was born on 1 January 1920 in Sheffield.  He was one of six children.  He was educated at Ecclesfield Grammar School, then attended Leeds University, where he gained a first in chemistry.

During the Second World War he joined the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME), working on radar tracking systems.  He saw service in Europe and in India, and was mentioned in dispatches. After the War he returned to Leeds University to study for a PhD in physical chemistry, where his tutor, M G Evans, introduced him to British Petroleum (BP).

He joined BP in 1948, and following the establishment of the Kirklington Hall research centre near Nottingham, worked there until 1957, when he was promoted to be manager of Petroleum Engineering at the Sunbury research centre. He was vice-president for exploration for BP North America from 1959 to 1962, with a particular interest in developing the oil fields of Alaska, and he subsequently moved to Iran as general manager for the Iranian Oil Exploration and Producing Company. In 1970 he was appointed general manager of BP’s Exploration and Production Department, where he was instrumental in establishing the Forties field, the first substantial oil field in the North Sea. He became Managing Director of BP in 1978, remaining in that post until his retirement in 1982.

After his retirement he served as chairman of the National Maritime Institute, overseeing its privatization and merger with the British Ship Research Association into British Maritime Technology, a new body of which he was appointed Life President in 1995.

He held a number of directorships, and was chairman at various times of Charterhouse Petroleum, the North American Gas Investment Trust, Schroder Energy, London American Energy, Midland and Scottish Resources, and Mountain Petroleum. He was appointed CBE in 1975.

He was President of the Pipeline Industries Guild (1979–81), of the Institute of Petroleum (1984–86), and of the Society of Underwater Technology (1975–76), of which he was also an Honorary Fellow. He was a Fellow of the Institute of Mining and of the Institute of Chartered Engineers, and he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in January 1987.

In 1948 he married Elizabeth Burrell-Davis, and they had two sons and two daughters. She died in 1998. In 2000 he married Margaret Stevens.

He died on 27 June 2001 at his home in Holt, Norfolk, at the age of 81.

Nancy Deloye Fitzroy was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.  She attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, where she gained her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 1949.

In 1950 she began what was to become a 37-year career with the General Electric Company (GE), Schenectady, New York. She was among the first engineers to work on the heat transfer of nuclear reactor cores, and she later worked in corporate research and development, being involved with technical problems in the fields of heat transfer, gas turbines, nuclear energy, and space vehicles – she worked on the first of the satellites that GE put into earth orbit. For 20 years she was also editor of the GE newsletter on heat and fluid flow. In 1979 she received the GE Power Systems Sector Engineering Award, and she holds three patents and is the author of more than 100 technical papers and articles. When she retired in 1987 she was Manager, Energy and Environmental Programs in the Turbine Marketing and Projects Division.

She is a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and a life member of the Society of Women Engineers, receiving their Achievement Award in 1972. She served on the Council on Public Affairs of the American Association of Engineering Societies. She was an active member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for many years, serving on the Board of Governors and on many other society bodies and committees, and she was the recipient of their Centennial Medallion in 1980. She was elected President of ASME in 1986–87, the first woman to head a major national engineering society.  She is a licensed commercial aeroplane and helicopter pilot, and has been a member of the ‘Whirly-Girls’, an international group dedicated to advancing women in aviation.

In 1995 she was elected to the American National Academy of Engineering, and she has honorary doctorates in science from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and in engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She was awarded honorary member ship of ASME in 2008, and she was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of mechanical Engineers in March 1988.

She is married to Roland Fitzroy, Jr, an electrical engineer.

Tao Hengxian was born in 1914 in Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province.  He graduated from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Shanghai Tongji University in 1939.

After graduation he worked first as a mechanical engineer with the Dayu Mining Machinery Building and Repairing Works in Jiangxi Province, and later with the Gansu Machinery Works. In 1945 he went to the United States, where he worked with a number of companies in Cincinnati, returning to China on 1947 to become Deputy Director of the Shanghai and Kunming Machinery Works, a position which he held for three years. In 1950 he became Section Chief in the Industry Department of Yunnan Province, and in 1953 was promoted to Departmental Chief and Deputy Director of the Bureau of Science and Technology of the Ministry of Machine Building Industry and the Instrument Bureau. In 1980 he became the Ministry’s Chief Engineer and a Vice-Minister.

He was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955, and was a member of the 5th, 6th, and 7th Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conferences. He was a member of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council.  From 1980 to 1985 he was a member of the secretariat of the China Association of Science and Technology (CAST), and from 1985 was a Member of the CAST National Committee. He was appointed a corresponding Member of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI) in 1955. In 1986 he received the Gold Medal of the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society (CMES), one of the highest engineering honours in China.

From 1961 to 1981 he was General Secretary of the CMES, and was instrumental in building it into probably the largest society of qualified mechanical engineers in the world. In 1981 he became Vice-President, and he was elected President in September 1986.

He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in June 1989.

Francis Leonard Tombs was born on 17 May 1924.  He was educated at Elmore Green School, Walsall and the University of London.

His career began in the electricity industry with GEC Ltd at Witton in Birmingham.  From here he moved on to become a graduate trainee with the Birmingham Corporation Electricity Department. After serving as a junior shift engineer at the Hams Hall ‘B’ power station, he joined the Midlands Division of what was then the British Electricity Authority as assistant grid control engineer. From here he went on to hold positions with both the Merseyside and the North Wales Divisions of what was by then the Central Electricity Authority.

In 1957 he returned to GEC at Erith, in Kent, where he was made manager of a new department set up to handle the commissioning of plant. He went on to become Sales Manager and was subsequently Engineering Services Manager. From 1965 to 1968, under C A Parsons and Company Ltd he was General Manager of the Erith works. In 1968 he moved to become General Manager of the air and gas handling division of James Howden and Godfrey Ltd in Glasgow, and was also made a director of the Howden group of companies.

He left Howden in 1969 to take up the post of Director of Engineering for the South of Scotland Electricity Board (SSEB).  He was appointed Deputy Chairman in 1973. In 1974 he became Chairman of the SSEB, and he took up the appointment of Chairman of the Electricity Council in 1977. He later moved on again to become Chairman of Rolls-Royce.

A Chartered Mechanical and Electrical Engineer, he has an honours degree in economics and the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred on him by Strathclyde University in 1976. He is a Fellow of the British Institute of Management, and he was elected to the Fellowship of Engineering in 1977. He was knighted in the 1978 New Year Honours list, and was made a life peer, as Baron Tombs of Brailles in the County of Warwickshire, in 1990.

In 1981 he served as President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE). He was made an Honorary Fellow of the IEE in 1991. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1989.

He sits on the cross-benches in the House of Lords.

Paul Thomas Fletcher was born in 1912 and was educated at Maidstone Grammar School and Maidstone Technical College. He served a three year apprenticeship with E A Gardner and Sons and remained with the company for seven years.

At the start of the Second World War he joined the Ministry of Works and undertook projects such as the construction of storage for the National Gallery in North Wales. He had responsibility for engineering services in public buildings and government factories, and for plant and equipment for service research establishments. He progressed to the position of Chief Mechanical and Electrical Engineer in 1951.

In 1954 Fletcher joined the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) as Deputy Director of Engineering in the Industrial Group. Throughout the 1960s he was heavily involved in the development of nuclear facilities, working for GEC and overseeing the construction of Japan’s first nuclear station, Tokai Mura. His experience in the nuclear field led to numerous consultancy appointments. He was Deputy Chairman of Atomic Power Constructions and Chairman of the Pressure Vessels Quality Assurance Board and served on the Sizewell B safety policy committee.

Paul Fletcher’s joined the IMechE in 1930 and was elected President in 1975. He supported the development of the Institution of Incorporated Engineers and the Royal Academy of Engineering. The IIE founded the Paul Fletcher Award in his honour. He was also President of the Institution of Mechanical Incorporated Engineers and the ITEME.

He died in 1998.

Robert Scholey was born on 8 October 1921.  He was the son of Harold and Evelyn Scholey.  He was educated at King Edward VII School, Sheffield and subsequently studied mechanical engineering at Sheffield University.

From 1943 he served with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME), leaving to take a position as an engineer with Steel Peach & Tozer of Rotherham, part of United Steel Companies, in 1947. In 1968 United Steel Companies became the British Steel Corporation, and he was appointed to the head office, becoming Managing Director of Strip Mills in 1972. In 1973 he was appointed to the Board of Directors of British Steel, and from 1976 he was Chief Executive and Deputy Chairman. He became Chairman in 1986, a position he was to hold until his retirement in 1992.

Between 1987 and 1989 he was the President of the Pipeline Industries Guild, and from 1987 until 1992 he was a Director on the Board of Eurotunnel plc. In 1989–90 he was President of the Institute of Metals. He was a non-executive director of the National Health Service Policy Board from 1989, and was President of Eurofer, the European Confederation of Iron and Steel Industries, from 1985 to 1990, remaining thereafter as Vice-President. In 1989 he was Chairman of the Iron and Steel Institute, and subsequently Vice-Chairman. He is a past chairman of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Development Trust.

He was appointed CBE in 1982 and was knighted in 1987. He was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by Sheffield Hallam University on 1977, and has honorary degrees from the University of Sheffield (1987) and the University of Teeside (1996). He won the Bessemer Gold Medal of the Institute of Metals and the Gold Medal of the British Institute of Management in 1988. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the City & Guilds of London Institute in 1990, and the same year was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1990.

In 1946 he married Joan Methley, and they have two daughters.

Richard Frederick Vincent was born on 23 August 1931.  He was the son of Frederick Vincent and his wife, Elizabeth, née Coleshill. He was educated at Aldenham School in Hertfordshire, and at the Royal Military College of Science (RMCS), Shrivenham.

He joined the Royal Artillery in 1951, initially as a National Service Officer, serving with the British Army on the Rhine until 1955. From 1960 to 1961 he served at the Radar Research Establishment in Malvern. In 1965 he attended the Royal Army Staff College in Camberley, and afterwards served with the Commonwealth Brigade in Malaysia. In 1968 he was appointed a General Staff Officer at the Ministry of Defence until 1970, when he was given command of the 12th Light Air Defence Regiment in Germany and Northern Ireland, serving in this role until 1972, when he returned to Camberley as Instructor at the Staff College.

In 1974 and 1975 he was Military Director of Studies at the RMCS Shrivenham, before taking command of the 19th Airportable Brigade from 1975 to 1977. He subsequently attended the Royal College of Defence Studies in Belgrave Square, after which he was appointed Deputy Military Secretary from 1979 to 1980. He returned to RMCS Shrivenham as Commandant in 1980, remaining in this post until 1983, when he was appointed Master-General of the Ordnance at the Ministry of Defence. In 1987 he was appointed Vice Chief of the Defence Staff, becoming Chief of the Defence Staff in 1991. He stepped down from this post in 1992, to become Chairman of the Military Committee of Nato, which post he held from 1993 to 1996.

He was created Baron Vincent of Coleshill, of Shrivenham, in the County of Oxfordshire, in 1996, and he is a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire, a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, and a member of the Distinguished Service Order. Among many other offices, he was Colonel Commandant of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) from 1981 to 1987, and in 1996 was made Master Gunner of St James Park. He has held a number of directorates, including Hunting Engineering Ltd, Vickers Defence Systems, and INSYS Ltd. He was a member of the court of Greenwich University (1997–2001) and was Chancellor of Cranfield University from 1998 to 2010. He is an adviser to the Council of the RMCS, and a governor of Imperial College London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1990.

He married Jean Patterson in 1955, and they have one son and one daughter.

Lindsay Sutherland Bryson was born on 22 January 1925 in Glasgow.  He was the son of James McAuslan Bryson and his wife Margaret, née Whyte. He attended Allan Glen’s school, leaving at the age of 14 to become a laboratory assistant. He subsequently gained a first class honours degree in electrical engineering as an external student of the University of London.

He joined the Navy in 1942 as an engineering cadet, then in 1944 as an electrical mechanic, becoming a midshipman in 1946. After the end of the Second World War he was sent to the USA where he was trained in the operation and maintenance of the ‘Skyraider’ airborne radar system. On his return he served as first electrical engineer to the Navy’s ‘Skyraider’ squadron, accompanying it aboard the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle.

He then served on a number of frigates and destroyers before being promoted to Lieutenant-Commander and appointed to the Ministry of Defence’s Department of Electrical Engineering at Bath. He was subsequently deputy weapons engineer on the cruiser HMS Tiger, and, after promotion to Commander, he served aboard the guided missile destroyer HMS Fife. He then moved to command of HMS Daedalus, the naval engineering training school at Lee-on-the-Solent, then on to the Royal College of Defence Studies until he was appointed Director of Naval Guided Weapons Systems in 1973, and then Director of Surface Weapons Systems in 1975, with the rank of Commodore.

He was promoted to Rear-Admiral in 1977 and appointed Director-General of Weapons (Naval), becoming Chief Naval Engineering Officer, with the rank of Vice-Admiral, in 1979. He was the first engineer to be appointed Controller of the Navy in 1981, serving in that position until his retirement in 1984.   He was the Chairman of the Marine Technology Directorate from 1981 to 1984), and he was Deputy Chairman of GEC-Marconi (1987–90), and Chairman of ERA Technology (1990–97).

He was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1981, and a Knight of the Order of St John in 1990. He was a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and also of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of East Sussex and Brighton and Hove in 1989, serving until 2000. In 1985–86 he was President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and he was Chairman of the Council of Sussex University from 1989 to 1995. He has honorary doctorates from the universities of Strathclyde, Bristol, and Sussex, and he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1990.

He married Averil Curtis-Willson in 1951, and they had one son and two daughters.

He died on 24 March 2005 in Brighton at the age of 80.

Edward Walter Parkes was born on 19 May 1926.  He attended King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and St John’s College, Cambridge.  He graduated with first class honours in the Mechanical Sciences Tripos in 1945.  
He worked at the Royal Aircraft Establishment and in the aircraft industry for a few years, before returning to Cambridge as a research student, and later a University Lecturer.  He remained at Cambridge until 1959, when he went to Stanford University as a Visiting Professor.  

In 1960 he went to the University of Leicester as Head of the Department of Engineering.  He remained there for five years before returning to Cambridge as Professor of Mechanics and Professorial Fellow of Gonville and Caius College.

Parkes became Vice-Chancellor of City University in 1974.  He remained at City for four years, before becoming Chairman of the University Grants Council from 1978 to 1983.  From 1983 to 1991 he was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds.  During the last few years of his time in Leeds he served as Chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the Universities of the United Kingdom (1989-1991).  He had been Vice-Chairman of this Committee since 1985.

He was knighted in 1983, and elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1992.  He had honorary doctorates from many universities, including Loughborough, Leicester, City, and the University of Wales.

Parkes married Margaret Parr CBE in 1950, and they had one son and one daughter. 

Algirdas Žukauskas was born in Biržai, Lithuania, on 2 February 1923.  He graduated from Kaunas State University Faculty of Technology in 1947, and in the same year began teaching there.  In 1951 he began teaching at Kaunas Polytechnic Institute, where he remained until 1953.

In 1956 Žukauskas was involved with the formation of the Institute of Energy and Electrotechnic.  Under his leadership the Institute, renamed as the Institute of Physical-Technical Energy Problems in 1967, became one of the largest centres of scientific enquiry in Lithuania.  It is now known as the Lithuanian Energy Institute.  Here he initiated forward-looking energy development plants, including Lithuania’s first high-voltage grid system.

His particular area of specialism was single-phase convective heat transfer.  He was the first in Lithuania to investigate the subject, and in this field he was acknowledged as one of the world’s leading experts.  He was invited to serve on the Editorial Board of the Heat Exchanger Design Handbook, and took responsibility for the sections of this book which dealt with single-phase convective heat-transfer.  The first edition of this handbook was published in 1982.  He was the author of over 600 scientific papers, including 170 published in international journals, and was the author of 15 books.

Professor Dr Algirdas Žukauskas was highly honoured in Lithuania, receiving the Honoured Scientist of Lithuania award in 1974, and was the State Prize Laureate in 1975.  He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1993. 

He died in 1997.

George William Barlow was born on 8 June 1924 in Oldham.  He was the son of Albert Edward Barlow and his wife Annice.  He was educated at Manchester Grammar School, then studied electrical engineering at Manchester University.  He graduated in 1944 with a first in electrical engineering.

From 1944 to 1947 Barlow served with the Royal Navy.  He then joined the English Electric Company, where he served in a number of roles, some in England and some overseas.  He worked in Spain from 1952 to 1955, and in Canada from 1958 to 1962.  In Canada he was manager of English Electric’s operations in Canada, which included hydro-electric projects and turbines for the St Lawrence Seaway, a series of waterways linking the Atlantic Ocean with the North Atlantic Great Lakes. 

In 1962 he returned to the UK to became Managing Director of English Electric’s Liverpool operations.  Here he was responsible for 14,000 employees working in a number of fields.  These included steam and water turbines, aero engines, electric power equipment and domestic appliance manufacture.  

He entered the computer industry in 1968, becoming Managing Director of English Electric Computers.  He felt that Britain’s computing companies should amalgamate, rather than complete with each other.  This resulted in the formation of International Computers Limited, ICL, which existed until it was renamed Fujitsu Services Limited.  He resigned from English Electric in 1968, after 21 years service, in protest against the merger of English Electric and GEC, which took place a few weeks after the formation of ICL.

He was asked by the Government to oversee the merger of three British strategic bearing companies to form the new company Ransome Hoffman Pollard Limited.  He served as Chairman of this company from 1971 to 1977. 

In 1977 he became Chairman and Chief Executive of the Post Office.  At this time, the Post Office also operated the telecommunications network, and Barlow realised that the two functions were so different that they should be separated.  The Labour government at the time did not agree with his proposal to split the Post Office, but with the election of a Conservative Government in 1979, Barlow received the go-ahead.  He organized the division in 12 months, and would have been Chairman of the privatized BT, but the Government then refused to privatize BT.  In 1980, Barlow refused the appointment and returned to work in the private sector.  His first job was to oversee the merger of Thorn and EMI, and he served as Chairman of Thorn EMI Engineering Group from 1980 to 1984.  He has been involved with numerous other companies since, including Ericsson, BICC, Vodafone and SKF (UK).  He was knighted for services to industry in 1977.

He has been always been active in the engineering profession, serving on the Council of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE, now the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)) from 1969 to 1972, as Vice-President from 1978-1980 and Deputy President from 1983-1984.  He was made an Honorary Fellow of the IEE in 1990.  He served on the Council of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers from 1971 to 1974, and was made an Honorary Fellow in 1993.  He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1991.

He was President of the British Electrotechnical and Allied Manufacturers Association from 1986 to 1987, Chairman of the Design Council from 1980 to 1986, and the Engineering Council from 1988-1990.  He has many honorary degrees, including Doctorates from Cranfield, Bath, Aston, City and UMIST.

He married Elaine Mary Atherton, née Adamson, in 1948.  They have one daughter and one son.

He died on the 19 May 2012, aged 88.

Ernest Ronald Oxburgh was born on 2 November 1934 in Liverpool.  He attended Liverpool Institute High School before going on to University College, Oxford, where he gained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and the University of Princeton, New Jersey, where, in 1960, he was awarded his PhD.

Returning to the UK he became a lecturer in geology at the University of Oxford until 1978, when he moved to Cambridge as Professor of Mineralogy and Petrology (1978–91). Between 1980 and 1988 was head of the Department of Earth Sciences. From 1978 to 1982 he was a Fellow of Trinity Hall, and he was President of Queens’ College from 1982 to 1989. He was a visiting Professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) during 1967 and 1968, and returned there in 1985 and 1986 as the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Visiting Scholar. In 1973–74 he was also visiting professor at both Stanford and Cornell Universities.

In 1988 he became Chief Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Defence, remaining in this post until 1993, when he became Rector of Imperial College, continuing in this position until 2001. During 2004 and 2005 he was Chairman of Shell Transport and Trading, and he is Chairman of Falck Renewables, a wind energy firm. In 2002 he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Science and Engineering Research Council (Singapore), and he is a member of the International Academic Advisory Panel of Singapore, and of the University Grants Committee (Hong Kong). He is honorary president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, and an advisor to Climate Change Capital. In 2007 he was chairman of DI Oils, plc, a biodiesel producer, and he is a director of the Global Legislators Organization for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE).

He was knighted in 1992, and created Baron Oxburgh, of Liverpool, in the County of Merseyside, in 1999. He sits on the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, and is an Officer of the All-Parliamentary Group for Earth Sciences. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and he is a Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, as well as an honorary member of the Australian and German Academies of Science. He is also a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and of the American Geophysical Union. He has honorary degrees from the universities of Paris, Leicester, Loughborough, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores, Lingnan (Hong Kong), Newcastle upon Tyne, and Leeds.  He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1993.

He is married to Ursula Mary, née Brown, and they have one son and two daughters.

Edward George Nicholas Paul Patrick Windsor was born on 9 October 1935 in Belgrave Square, London.  He is the grandson of King George V and Queen Mary. He was educated at Ludgrove Preparatory School in Berkshire, going on to Eton and Le Rosey (Switzerland), before entering the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.

He graduated from Sandhurst in 1955 as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Scots Greys. He served in Hong Kong in 1962 and 1963, and afterwards on the staff of Eastern Command. In 1970 he commanded a squadron of his regiment serving in the Sovereign Base Area in Cyprus as part of the United Nations peace-keeping force. He retired from the army in 1976 with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He was subsequently promoted to Major-General (1983) and Field Marshal (1993).

He has performed Royal duties on behalf of his cousin, Queen Elizabeth II, for over 50 years, being her representative in many independence celebrations in former colonies. However, one of his major public roles for many years was as Vice-Chairman of British Trade International, and later as the United Kingdom’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment.  In this role he travelled widely, representing the British government and fostering trade relations overseas. Amongst his other interests he is president of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, of the RAF Benevolent Fund, of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and of the Royal United Services Institute. He has also been President of the Scout Association since 1975, and of the Wimbledon All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Since 1967 he has been Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England, the governing body of Freemasonry in England and Wales.

He is a Royal Knight of the Garter and a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George and of the Royal Victorian Order. He is a Personal Aide-de-Camp to Queen Elizabeth II, and he is the recipient of the United Nations Medal for Cyprus, and of the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation, Silver Jubilee, and Golden Jubilee Medals. He is a Patron of Trinity College of Music, and of the British Computer Society, and he is Chancellor of the University of Surrey. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1994.

On 8 June 1961 he married Katherine Worsley, daughter of Sir William Arthrington Worsley. They have three children, and live at Kensington Palace, London.

Douglas F Muster was born in 1918 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  He served as a Captain in the Army during the Second World War, then attended Marquette University, Wisconsin, gaining a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering.  He went on to gain a PhD from Illinois Institute of Technology.

Muster began his engineering career working at the General Electric Laboratories.  In 1961, he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering.  In 1962 he was appointed chairman of the mechanical engineering department, and continued in this role for the next ten years.  After serving as chairman he continued at Cullen College of Engineering as Brown and Root Professor Emeritus of mechanical engineering.  

Muster was a well respected forensic engineer, and served as expert witness for attorneys across the United States.  He was also an adjunct professor at the University of Houston Law Centre.

With his wife, Jean, he had four sons and one daughter.  

He died in September 2007.

John Gowen Collyear was born on19th February 1927.  He was the son of John Robert Collyear and his wife Amy Elizabeth, née Gowen. He attended Leeds University, graduating with a BSc degree in engineering and going on to become a graduate apprentice with Joseph Lucas Industries, in Birmingham, in 1951.

Completing his graduate apprenticeship with Joseph Lucas Industries he continued there as a production engineer, moving in 1953 to a similar position with the Glacier Metal Company in Glasgow, where he was to remain for the major part of the next twenty years. In 1956 he became Production Manager, and later than same year was made Chief Production Engineer.

In 1959 he was promoted to Factory General Manager, remaining in that position for the next ten years, after which he was made Managing Director. In 1972 he finally left Glacier Metals to join Associated Engineering Limited, as Managing Director of the bearings division, and in 1975 he became Group Managing Director of what was then AE plc. In 1981 he was made Chairman, and he remained in this role until 1986, when he moved to become Chairman of the MK Electric Group plc (1987–88). At this time he was also Chairman of Fulmar Ltd (1987–1991), and Chairman of USM Texon Ltd, formerly the United Machinery Group (1987–1995).

From 1985 until 1988 he served as Chairman of the Technology Requirements Board of the Department of Trade and Industry, and from 1987 until 1997 he was the President of the Motor Industry Research Association (MIRA). From 1992 to 1994 he was President of the Institute of Metals.

He was knighted in 1986. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1979, and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Metals, and Mining in 2002. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1995.

In 1953 he married Catherine Barbara Newman, and they have one son and one daughter. He lives in Stow-on-the-Wold, in Gloucestershire.

Hiroshi Ohba joined the Kawasaki company in 1948, straight from university.  He remained there for the rest of his working life, eventually becoming President, in 1987, and Chief Executive of Kawasaki Heavy Industries.  In 1995 he presented the Seventh Hugh Ford Management Lecture to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and was elected an Honorary Fellow.  

Ohba was also interested in ocean engineering.  In 2001 he won the Compass International Award of the Marine Technology Society, which is awarded for outstanding contributions to the advancement of the science and art of oceanography and marine technology by an individual, company, or organization from any country or territory outside the United States working in the field.  

Ohba served as Chairman of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) from 1995 to 2002.  He was also Chairman of the Ocean Resources Committee of Keidanren for many years.  He played an important role in the organizing of Techno-Ocean symposia, serving as the Chairman of the Organizing Committee.

Dr Hiroshi Ohba died in December 2003.

Eiji Toyoda was born on 12 September 1913, near Nagoya in Aichi Prefecture, Japan.  He was the son of Heikichi Toyoda and his wife Nao. His uncle Sakichi Toyoda had founded the family business, Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, in 1926. From a very early age he was immersed in the manufacturing business, as his family lived inside the spinning factory at Nagoya. He attended Tokyo Univeristy to study mechanical engineering, graduating in 1936.

After graduating he joined the family spinning business as an engineering trainee, transferring a year later to the newly-formed Toyota Motor Company at Koromo, subsequently re-named Toyota City. This remains the headquarters of the Toyota Motor Company worldwide. He worked initially on the development of the six-cylinder A1 prototype, the forerunner of the first production saloon, with styling heavily influenced by the contemporary Chrysler Airflow. He gained lots of hands-on experience, subscribing to the view that it is not possible to do a job well without getting your hands dirty.

The Second World War left Japan’s industry in a shambles, and the post-war period saw the Toyota Company struggling to survive. By 1950 he was managing director of the manufacturing arm of Toyota, and went to the US to study the automobile industry there, visiting Ford’s River Rouge plant at Dearborn, Michigan. Hugely impressed by the scale of the operations, he was nevertheless shocked by its inefficiencies, and returned to Japan determined to adopt US mass production methods, but with significant improvements. 

He developed the core concepts of what was later to become known as the ‘Toyota Way’, integral to which was the idea of ‘just-in-time’ ordering to keep inventory to a minimum, and the clear identification of all parts so that errors and re-working were avoided. This, allied to the kaizan concept of constant improvement designed to cut production and labour costs, enabled Toyota to become one of the most successful manufacturing companies the world has ever seen. He was made President of Toyota in 1967, and under his leadership during the 1970s, and 1980s the company was tremendously successful, making huge inroads into the automotive market in the USA, in Europe, and worldwide.

In 1981 he stepped down from the Presidency of the company to become Chairman, and in 1983 he determined that Toyota should move into the luxury car market, with the establishment of the Lexus brand. He stepped down as Chairman in 1994 at the age of 81, although he still holds the title of Honorary Chairman.

John Whitaker Fairclough was born on 23 August 1930 at Carlton Miniott, near Thirsk, in Yorkshire.  He was the son of Harold Whitaker Fairclough and his wife, Elsinora, née Chappell. He went to Thirsk Grammar Scvhool, and then on to Manchester University to study electrical engineering. After graduating he undertook a period of National Service with the RAF as a radar technician.

In 1954 he joined the fledgling computer department of Ferranti, and he worked in New York on the design of memory modules for Ferranti’s first commercial computer, the Pegasus. In 1957 he joined IBM at their laboratories in Poughkeepsie, New York, moving to their newly-established Hursley Park laboratory near Winchester, in Hampshire, in 1958. Here he set up and ran the development of the SCAMP computer, and his work led to the establishment of the ‘control store’, an aspect of computer architecture that was fundamental to the development of the IBM System 360 computers. Launched in 1964, these machines set the industry standard until the development of the microprocessor heralded the end of the mainframe era.

In 1968 he became Assistant General Manager of IBM UK, but in 1970 returned to research and development at the IBM complex at Raleigh in North Carolina, where he pioneered ‘distributed computing’, which would ultimately enable office workers to communicate through networks. He returned to Hursley as Managing Director in 1974, and in 1983 assumed responsibility for IBM UK’s manufacturing as well as development, with responsibility for the work forces at Havant and Greenock – some 6500 people.

In 1986 he was seconded from IBM to the Cabinet Office as Chief Scientific Adviser, appointed by Margaret Thatcher, to advise on how to get the best economic return from spending on science and technology. He was responsible for the establishment in 1987 of the Advisory Council on Science and Technology, and by 1988 he had laid down the principles upon which public financial support for science should be based. Thus, so called ‘near-market’ research should be the responsibility of the industry likely to benefit from it, whereas government money should go to those areas where a marketable product or process was much less easily identified.

He was knighted in 1990, leaving his role as Chief Scientific Adviser to become chairman of Rothschild Ventures Ltd. He has several honorary degrees, and held a number of directorships, including Oxford Instruments and Lucas Industries, and he was chairman of the Engineering Council and of the Centre for Exploitation of Science and Technology. He was President of the British Computer Society, and Vice-President of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. He was a Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering in the USA, and he was awarded the Mensford Gold Medal of the Institution of Production Engineers. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1996.

He married Margaret Harvey in 1954 and they had two sons and one daughter; she died in 1996, and in 2000 he married Karen Jefferson.

He died on 5 June 2003 at the age of 72.

Ronald Mason was born on 22 July 1930.  He was the only son of David John Mason and his wife Olwen, née James. He studied chemistry at the University of Wales and later at the University of London.

He began his career in 1953 as a research associate for the British Empire Cancer Campaign, remaining with them for eight years until he took up a lectureship in chemistry at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, now Imperial College London. In 1963 he was appointed Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Sheffield.  He remained in this post until 1971, when he was appointed Professor of Chemistry at the University of Sussex, in Brighton.  He was to fill this role for the next fifteen years, and became Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University in 1977. During the 1970s and the 1980s he was awarded visiting professor ships to many overseas universities, including the University of California at Berkeley (1975), Ohio State University (1976), North Western University (1977), the A D Little Visiting Professorship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1970), the Erskine Visiting Professorship at the University of Christchurch, New Zealand (1977), and the Schmidt Memorial Lectureship at the University of Israel (1977).

He was a member of the Science Research Council from 1971 to 1975, and a consultant and council member of the Royal United Services Institute from 1984 to 1988. He was the UK Member of the United Nations Commission on Disarmament Studies between 1984 and 1992, and was Chairman of the Council for Arms Control from 1986 to 1990. From 1991 to 1993 he served on the Engineering Technology Committee of the Department of Trade and Industry, and from 1986 he was President of the British Hydromechanics Research Association (BHRA), becoming Chairman of the successor British Hydromechanics Research Group until 1995. Amongst many other roles he was also Chairman of Hunting Engineering Ltd (1987) and Chairman of British Ceramics Research Ltd (1990–96). From 1990 to 1994 he was Foundation Chairman of the Stoke Mandeville Burns and Reconstructive Surgery Research Trust, and he was Chairman of the University College Hospitals NHS Trust from 1992 to 2001.

He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1975, and appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1980. He is a fellow of University College Cardiff, and of University College London, and he has honorary degrees from the University of Wales and Keele University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and a Fellow of the Institute of Metals. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1996.

In 1952 he married Pauline Pattinson, and they had three daughters; the marriage was dissolved. In 1979 he married Elizabeth Rosemary Grey-Edwards; she died in 2009.

Ralph ‘Harry’ Robins was born on 16th June 1932.  He was the son of Leonard Haddon and Maude Lillian Robins. He attended Imperial College, graduating with a degree in engineering.

He began his career as a graduate apprentice with Rolls-Royce, Derby, in 1955, remaining there as a Development Engineer during the 1950 and 1960s. In 1971 he was appointed Executive Vice-President of Rolls-Royce, Inc, the company’s American operation, but after two years there he returned to the UK, in 1973, as the Managing Director of the Rolls Royce Industrial and Marine Division. In 1978 he was appointed Commercial Director of Rolls-Royce Ltd, and from 1983 to 1984 he was Chairman of the Zurich-based joint venture manufacturing company, International Aero Engines AG, of which Rolls-Royce was a major share holder. In 1984 he was made Managing Director of Rolls-Royce plc, remaining in this position until 1989 when he became Deputy Chairman and, from 1990, Chief Executive as well. He finally became Chairman of Rolls-Royce plc in 1992, the position he was to hold until his resignation in 2003.

In 1986 and 1987 he was President of the Society of British Aerospace Companies, and from 1993 to 1998 was a member of the government’s Advisory Council for Science and Technology. In 2004 he was appointed Chairman of the Defence Industries Council. He held non-executive directorships of a number of major companies, including Schroeders plc (1990–2002), Cable and Wireless plc (1994–2003), and Marks and Spencers plc (1997–2001).

He was knighted in 1988, the same year in which he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He has honorary degrees from the universities of Cranfield, Nottingham, Cambridge, Derby, Strathclyde, and Sheffield, and in 1996 he was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit (of Germany). In 1990 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1996.

He married Patricia Maureen Grimes in 1962 and they have two daughters.

Sir Bernard Crossland was born in 1923.  He was educated at Simon Langton Grammar School, Canterbury, before beginning an apprenticeship with Rolls Royce, Derby, in 1940.  He studied part-time at Derby Technical College, which led to the award of a State Bursary at the then Nottingham University College, where he was awarded a BSc (Ext. London) in Engineering, in July 1943.  He returned to Rolls Royce, where he was appointed a Technical Assistant in the Experimental Vibration Department, where he was concerned with experimental and theoretical work on the vibration of Merlin, Griffon and Derwent engines and vibration of reduction gears on destroyers.

In 1945 he began working as a Lecturer at Luton Technical College.  After a year he was appointed Assistant Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bristol.  He became Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at Bristol, before taking up an appointment in 1959 as Professor and Head of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering in the Queen’s University, Belfast.  He served as Dean of the Faculty of Engineering from 1964 to 1967, and as Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor from 1978 to 1982.  He took early retirement in 1984.

Crossland was particularly interested in high pressure engineering, and he worked closely with ICI on high pressure polyethylene plant.  He also contributed to the development of explosive welding.

After his retirement he was involved in the investigations of a number of accidents.  These include the King’s Cross Fire Investigation in 1988 and the Public Hearing into the Bilsthorpe Colliery Accident in 1994. 

In 2010, Sir Bernard Crossland received The Royal Academy of Engineering's Sustained Achievement Medal in recognition of his contributions in the field of high pressure engineering and the links he helped to forge between industry and academia throughout his career.

Sir Bernard Crossland was President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1986.  He died on 17 January 2011.

John Parnaby was born on 10 July 1937 in Workington, Cumbria.  He was the son of John Banks Parnaby and his wife Mary Elizabeth. He attended King’s College, Durham, now the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, graduating in 1961 with a first class honours degree in mechanical engineering. During 1962 and 1963 he was a research assistant at King’s College, where he set up the Control Systems Laboratory in Mechanical Engineering. He was awarded a PhD in Control Systems Engineering by the University of Glasgow in 1966.

He began his career as an academic, and as Professor of Manufacturing Systems Engineering at the University of Bradford he built up an internationally-acclaimed research group and initiated the first UK undergraduate degree course in Manufacturing Systems Engineering, a model since emulated by a number of other universities.

Parnaby subsequently moved into industry, spending the greater part of the rest of his career with Lucas Industries. He began as Group Technical Director, and was subsequently Chairman of Lucas Systems Engineering and Software Ltd, Chief Executive of Lucas Applied Technologies Ltd, Chief Executive of Lucas Electronic Systems Ltd, and Group Director of Lucas Industries plc, retiring as Group Director of the merged Lucas Varity plc in 1997. He was subsequently chairman of several companies, including Amchem Ltd, BPSE Ltd, Think Digital Solutions plc, and Knowledge Process Software plc. He was also appointed Chairman of the Aston Independent Hospital in 2004.

He has been a non-executive director of a number of important companies, including Scottish Power plc, Jarvis plc, and Molins plc. He was a Member of the Council of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and a Senator of the Engineering Council. He was President of the Institution of Manufacturing Engineers and of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (now the Institution for Engineering and Technology).

He was appointed CBE in 1987, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He has been the recipient of many awards, including the Gold Medal of the Institute of Manufacturing Engineers, The Faraday Medal in the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the Gold Medal of the Institute of Purchasing and Supply, and two Silver Medals from the Rubber and Plastics Institute. He has received honorary degrees from the Council for National Academic Awards and Liverpool Polytechnic (1990), Loughborough University and the University of Hull (1991), the Open University (1992), the University of Bradford (1993), Napier University (1997), the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (2000), and Aston University (2001). He is an Honorary Professor of Cambridge University, and an Honorary Fellow of Coventry Polytechnic.  He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1997.

On 4th July 1959 he married Lilian Armstrong, and they have one daughter and three sons.

Robert Michael Nerem graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1959 with a BSc degree in engineering.  He went on to the Ohio State university, where he gained a masters degree in 1961, and was subsequently awarded a PhD in 1964.

His focus was initially on aerospace engineering, and he joined the faculty of Ohio State University after his PhD in 1964 to undertake research on heat transfer in high-temperature shock-treated gases. He stayed at Ohio State University for fifteen years, and it was towards the end of his time there that his interest in bioengineering first began to develop. It was motivated initially by the possible role of fluid dynamics in the development of artherosclerosis, and he began to undertake research into cardiovascular fluid dynamics. In 1979 he became Professor and Chairman of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston, Texas, a position he was to occupy until 1986. It was here, in 1981, that he established a cell culture laboratory and began to study the influence of physical forces on the cells that make up blood vessels. It is from this early research that his continuing interest in tissue engineering has grown.

In 1987 he moved from Houston to the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, where he took up a professorship in the school of mechanical engineering, and also the Parker H Petit Distinguished Chair for Engineering in Medicine. Here his research has focused on the mechanical properties of living tissues. Since 1995 he has been director of the Parker H Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, and he is also the director of the Georgia Tech/Emory Center got the Engineering of Living Tissues, an engineering research centre established in 1998 and funded by the National Science Foundation. From 2003 to 2006 he also served on the National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.

He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1988, and to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1992. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998. He is a past president of the International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering, and of the International Union for Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine, and he was the founding president of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. In 2008 he received the Founders Award from the National Academy of Engineering.

David Evan Naunton Davies was born on 28 October 1935 in Cardiff.  He was the son of David Evan Davies and his wife Sarah, née Samuel. He was educated at West Monmouth School and then at the University of Birmingham, where he studied electrical engineering, graduating with a masters degree in 1960.

He remained at Birmingham University until 1966, first as a PhD student and later as a member of staff.  He then moved to the Royal Radar Establishment, Malvern, where he became Senior Principal Scientific Officer. Between 1967 and 1971 he was Assistant Director of the Research Department of British Railways, Derby.  He then moved on to become Professor of Electrical Engineering at University College London, where he later served as Vice-Provost between 1986 and 1988. In 1988 he was appointed Vice-Chancellor of Loughborough University of Technology, and in 1993 he became Chief Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Defence, remaining in this post until 1999.

He produced a report, published in 2000, of the Ladbroke Grove train crash in 1999 in which 31 people died, and in 2001 he was asked to become Chairman of Railway Safety, a new company established to promote rail safety issues. He occupied this position until 2003. He has served as non-executive Chairman of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, and he is Chairman of the Ministry of Defence Nuclear Research Advisory Council. From 1998 to 2001 he was Pro-Chancellor of the University of Sussex.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, serving as its President from 1996 to 2001. He was knighted in 1994, and has received many honours and awards, including the Rank Prize for Optoelectronics (1984), the Callendar Medal of the Institute of Measurement and Control (1984), the Centennial Medal of the US Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (1984), and the Faraday Medal of the Institute for Engineering and Technology (1987). He has honorary degrees from the universities of Loughborough, Bradford, Warwick, Wales, and Birmingham, among others, and was made an Honorary Fellow of University College London in 2006, having already been elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1997.

He married Enid Patilla on 21 July 1962, and they had two sons; she died in 1990, and he subsequently married Jennifer Eason Rayner in 1992.

Robert Malpas was born on 9 August 1927.  He was educated at Taunton School in Somerset, and then at St Georges College, Buenos Aires.  He then entered Durham University to study mechanical engineering, graduating with first class honours in 1948.

In the same year he joined Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI).  After fifteen years service he had become Head of Engineering in the Petrochemical division. In 1963 he was appointed General Manager of a joint venture in Spain, and in recognition of his work there he was awarded, in 1967, the Spanish Order of Civil Merit. From 1966 to 1975 he worked for ICI Europa, in Brussels, becoming Chief Executive in 1973. In 1975 he was appointed a director to the main board of ICI, with responsibility for the Organics Division, for Engineering, and for Eastern Europe.

He left ICI in 1978 to become President of Halcon International, a New York-based chemicals process research company belonging to the Texas Eastern Corporation. In 1983 he joined the board of BP plc as a managing director with responsibility for Chemicals Research, Engineering, and Latin America, retiring from this post in 1989, when he was appointed Chairman of Powergen plc, one of the successor companies to the Central Electricity Generating Board. From 1991 to 1998 he was Chairman of the Cookson Group plc, and he was British Co-Chairman of Eurotunnel plc from 1996 to 1998. He has held a number of non-executive directorships, including BOC plc, Baring Bros, and Repsol SA (Spain). He is Chairman of Ferghana Partners and of Evolution plc.

He is a former President of the Society for Chemical Industry (1988–89) and is a former Senior Vice-President of the Royal Academy of Engineering (1989–92). He was the first Chairman of LINK, the government/industry research funding partnership (1986–93), and from 1993 to 1996 he was Chairman of the Natural Environment Research Council. He was appointed CBE in 1975, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1999.

He married Josephine Dickinson in 1956; she died in 2004.

Alan Arthur Wells was born on 1st May 1924 at Goff’s Oak in Hertfordshire.  He was the son of Arthur John Wells, himself an engineer. He was educated at the City of London School, leaving in 1940 to become an apprentice fitter. He continued to study as an external student of the University of London, and he was awarded an intermediate BSc in 1941, and a full honours degree in engineering after two years at Nottingham University.

After graduation he went to the Admiralty works in Rosyth, undertaking laboratory work in support of warship design. At the end of the Second World War he took a research post at Cambridge University, but in 1952 he moved to the British Welding Research Association, where, by the 1960s, he had become Deputy Director of Research. His work at BHRA included seminal studies and findings on brittle fracture.

In 1964 he moved to Queen’s University Belfast, accepting the newly created Chair of Structural Science within the Department of Civil Engineering. He became Head of Department in 1970, and from 1973 to 1976 he was also Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science and Technology. While he was at Belfast he invented a novel turbine for generating electricity from wave-power. Now widely known as the Wells Turbine, this device rotates in one direction, irrespective of the direction of axial fluid flow driving it. It is best suited to devices in which waves force the piston-like motion of a column of water in a chamber. Low-speed reciprocating movement is thus efficiently transformed into high-speed rotational motion of the turbine shaft, and this can be used to drive an electrical generator. It became the most commonly adopted machine in prototype wave-power devices throughout the world during the following decades.

He returned to what was by then the Welding Institute as Director General in 1977, remaining in this post until his retirement in 1989. During this period he was involved in the design and construction of a prototype wave-power plant based on an oscillating water column on the Isle of Islay. He later also contributed to two further prototypes, the OSPREY device (1995) and LIMPET (2000). LIMPET is still operational today and is to date one of the most successful wave-power plants in the world.

While he was still a student he won the Bayliss Prize of the Institution of Civil Engineers (1942), and throughout his professional career he continued to win prizes and awards, including the President’s Gold Medal of the Society of Engineers (1955), the Premium Award of the Royal Institute of Naval Architects (1956), the Larke Medal of the Institute of Welding (1968), the Platinum Medal of the Institute of Metals (1986), the Esso Medal of the Royal Society (1994),  the Edstrom Medal and the Yoshiaka Arata Award of the International Institute of Welding (1987 and 1994 respectively), and the Ludwig Tetmajer Award of the Technical University of Vienna.  He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1982. He has honorary degrees from the universities of Ghent (1973), Glasgow (1982), and Queen’s, Belfast (1986), and he is Fellow of the Royal Society (1977), a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (979), and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Welding (1969). He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1999.

He married Rosemary Mitchell in June 1950.

He died on 8 November 2005 at the age of 81.

Joseph Cyril Bamford born on 21 June 1916 in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire.  ‘Mr JCB’ was the great grandson of the founder of Bamfords Ltd, the agricultural engineering company founded in the nineteenth century which exported machinery all over the world. He attended Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, and subsequently joined the Alfred Herbert Company in Coventry, at the time the largest machine-tool manufacturer in the UK. He spent some time working for them as a diesel engineer in Ghana.

During the Second World War he served with the RAF in supply and logistics in the African Gold Coast, and afterwards he spent a short period with English Electric before joining the family firm. However, this too was short-lived, and he set himself up in a rented garage building farm trailers from scrap and war surplus material. This proved to be a successful venture, and his philosophy of sticking to what you are good at, reinvesting profits, and inventiveness resulted in a number of market-leading innovations. In 1948 he introduced the first hydraulic tipping trailer in Europe, and in 1950 he moved to an old factory building in Rocester.  In the following year he started to paint all of his machinery bright yellow.

In 1953 he brought out his break-through product, the ‘backhoe loader’ – the JCB Mk1 – which was originally fitted to a trailer. In 1957 he brought to market the ‘hydra-digga’, incorporating the excavator and the bucket loader as a single unit which was to prove invaluable to both the agricultural and construction industries. This piece of equipment has been the subject of constant development and improvement, but is still essentially the same tool introduced in 1957. From the 1960s onwards he began to export large numbers of excavators to the USA, and the company has won several Queen’s Awards for Exports as its sales have spread to more than 130 countries worldwide.

He was a very committed to marketing, and put a lot of effort into making sure that JCB equipment was not only seen, though the bright yellow paint, but also seen as reliable and tough. As a consequence, ‘JCB’ has become a word in its own right, defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “a type of mechanical excavator with a shovel at the front and a digging arm at the rear”, and the bright yellow paint has become a standard paint, known simply as ‘JCB Yellow’.

In 1975 he retired from the company he founded and ran. In 1999 JCB was the largest privately-owned engineering company in the UK, employing 4500 people and manufacturing 30,000 machines a year, in twelve factories on three continents, earning revenue of some £850m.

He was appointed CBE in 1969, and in 1993 became the only Briton ever to be honoured in the American Construction Equipment Hall of Fame.

He married Marjorie Griffin in 1941, and they had two sons.

He died in London on 1 March 2001 at the age of 84.

Robert William Simpson Easton was born on 30th October, 1922 in Govan.  He was the son of James Easton and Helen Agnes, née Simpson. He was educated at the Royal Technical School in Glasgow, and then became an apprentice at the Fairfields shipyard in Govan.

In 1951 he moved to the Yarrow shipyard, the last major warship yard in Scotland, where he rose to become Sales Director, Deputy Managing Director, and finally Chairman and Managing Director. He had joined Yarrow at a time when the Scottish shipbuilding industry was already beginning its long decline, yet in spite of this he managed to keep the workforce together and maintained Yarrow as the only profitable shipbuilder on the Clyde, presiding over the launch of more than 100 ships. In 1967 Yarrow Shipbuilders Limited (YSL) merged with four other companies under the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) banner, and in 1970 he became Managing Director of UCS. In 1971 UCS went into receivership, prompting one of the most celebrated disputes in trade union history - a ‘work-in’ by the labour force to complete the orders that Yarrow’s and other yards had in place. In spite of this, UCS collapsed, and in February 1972 the Government rescued two of the yards, YSL and Fairfields, as Govan Shipbuilders.

In 1985 YSL was sold to the General Electric Company (GEC), and both of the Govan Shipbuilders yards remain in operation today as part of BAE Systems. From 1983 to 1993 he was Chairman of the Clyde Port Authority, and he was Chairman of GEC Scotland from 1989 to 1999, and Chairman of GEC Naval Systems from 1991 to 1994. He was a Director of the Glasgow Development Agency, the West of Scotland Water Authority, and of Caledonian MacBrayne. In 1993 he was installed as Chancellor of the University of Paisley.
He was created CBE in 1980, and knighted in 1990, the same year in which he was Honorary Vice-President of the Institute of Naval Architects. A Freeman of the City of London, he was also a Fellow of the Institute of Marine Engineers, and he was President of the Institute of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland from 1997 to 1999. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 2000.

He married Jean Fraser in 1948, and they had one son and one daughter.

He died on 10th October 2008 at his home in Stuckenduff, near Helensburgh, at the age of 85.

Nicholas Vernon Scheele was born on 3 January 1944 in Essex.  He was educated at St Cuthbert’s Society and at the University of Durham, where he graduated in 1966 with a degree in modern languages.

At the age of 22 he began work with Ford, initially working in procurement. He went on to hold senior purchasing positions in both Ford UK and Ford Europe, before moving to similar roles in the USA in 1978. In 1988 he became a senior executive of Ford Mexico, where he was responsible for directing both manufacturing and marketing operations. He returned to the UK in 1992 to become Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Jaguar Cars Ltd, where he effectively turned the company around, doubling sales and saving thousands of jobs, and restoring Jaguar to its place as one of the world’s leading automotive marques. He moved on to become Chairman of Ford Europe in 2000, and in 2001 was made Group Vice-President of Ford North America.  Three months later he became President and Chief Operating Officer of the Ford Motor Company, responsible for its global automotive business.

After chairing their centenary appeal to raise money for a childcare centre in Coventry, he was elected a lifetime member of the National Society for the Protection and Care of Children (NSPCC), and he is also an active supporter of the Save the Children Fund, the St Basil’s Appeal for Homeless Children, and a past-president of the British Motor Industry Benevolent Fund. A strong advocate of close ties between industry and education, he serves on the Advisory Boards of Coventry and Durham Universities, the British American Chamber of Commerce, and the Fulbright Commission, among others. He was Chancellor of Warwick University from 2003 to 2008, and chairman of the Prince of Wales Business and Environment Committee, and of the manufacturing group of Foresight 2020.

He was knighted in 2001 and appointed to the Order of St Michael and St George. He has honorary degrees from Loughborough and Durham Universities, and he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 2000. Scheele died in 2014.

Edmund John Philip Browne was born on 20 February 1948 in Hamburg, Germany.  He was the son of Edmund Browne, a British Army officer and his Hungarian wife, Paula, a survivor of Auschwitz. He was educated at the Kings School in Ely, Cambridgeshire, going on to St John’s College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a first class honours degree in physics. He also has a Masters degree in Business from Stanford University, California.

He joined British Petroleum (BP) as an apprentice in 1966, while he was still a student. Between 1969 and 1983 he held a number of positions in exploration and production in Anchorage, New York, San Francisco, London, and Canada, and in 1984 he was appointed Group Treasurer and Chief Executive of BP Finance International. In 1986, he was made Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Standard Oil in Cleveland, Ohio, and the following year, after the merger of BP and Standard, he was additionally appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Standard Oil Production Company. In 1989 he became Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of BP Exploration, based in London, and in September 1991, he joined BP's board as a Managing Director. He was appointed Group Chief Executive in 1995, and following the merger of BP and Amoco, he became Group Chief Executive of the combined group in 1998, remaining in this post until his resignation in 2007. He has said that he felt pressured into resignation by allegations about his personal life – he is homosexual – which were published in a UK national newspaper, and that this was a matter of deep personal regret.

He was knighted in 1998, and created Baron Browne, of Madingley, in the County of Cambridgeshire, in 2001. He is currently Managing Director and Managing Partner (Europe) of Riverstone Holdings LLC. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006, and the same year was President of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He was appointed Chair of the Trustees of the Tate Gallery in 2009, and he was author of the independent review of university tuition fees: Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education (the ‘Browne report’), published in October 2010. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Petroleum and an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers,  the Royal Society of Chemists, and the Institution of Civil Engineers, and he was elected and Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 2000.

Professor Duncan Dowson was born in 1928.  He was educated at Lady Lumley’s Grammar School, at Pickering, Yorkshire.  He attended Leeds University, where he was awarded a BSc in Mechanical Engineering in 1950 and a PhD in 1952. 

He began his career as a Research Engineer at Sir W.G. Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Co., where he remained for two years before taking up the position of Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at Leeds University.  He was an instrumental member of the Ministry of Education and Science committee that identified tribology in 1966.  The following year he established the Institute of Tribology at Leeds to coordinate tribological practice in industry, teaching and research.  Her served as Institute Director until 1987.

At Leeds University, Dowson has promoted innovative degree courses, undergraduate exchange systems and continuing professional education. 

His own research has focussed on elastohydrodynamic lubrication, the lubrication of machine elements and natural synovial joints, and the tribological characteristics of total replacement joints.

He was elected to the Fellowship of Engineering in 1982, and was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1987.  He has worked on committees established by the Department of Education and Science, the Department of Health and Social Security, and the Science and Engineering Research Council. 

He was President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1992.