List of British engineers

This is a historical list of British engineers.

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

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

List

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