Abstract
IN less troublous times professional engineers all the world over would undoubtedly have wished to collaborate in celebrating the centenary of so important an event as the founding in 1840 of the regius chair of civil engineering and mechanics at the University of Glasgow. The second occupant of the chair, Prof. W. J. Macquorn Rankine, was an exceptionally brilliant man to whom all fields of knowledge seemed alike, and there are few branches of engineering science to which he did not make some notable contribution. In his time there was no thought of the expansion that was soon to take place, which now makes separate subjects of civil, mechanical and electrical engineering. As Engineering of September 27 points out, he was also an accepted authority on naval architecture. His influence was, and still remains, potent in many branches of design. The Glasgow Herald of September 16 says that he was “the first really powerful thinker in this country to bring the highest mathematical resources to bear on engineering practice”.
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Engineering in the University of Glasgow. Nature 146, 487 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/146487a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/146487a0