#EngineeringHero Countdown: Top 20!
Categories: Civil and structural
Last week, we asked our twitter followers to tweet us their #engineeringhero suggestions. The response was amazing, but we've counted up the votes and narrowed it down to the top 20.
Here are your engineering heroes, counting down from 20 to 11. The top 10 will follow tomorrow, stay tuned!
20) The Wright Brothers, Orville (1871-1948) and Wilbur (1867-1912) were American aviation pioneers, who built the first working aeroplane and developed the first practical fixed-wing aircraft.
19) Thomas Edison (1847-1931) was a prolific American inventor. His most famous devices include the motion picture camera and a long-lasting electric lightbulb.
18) Carl Bosch (1874-1940) was an innovative German industrial chemist, known for engineering synthetic fertilizer through the Haber-Bosch process.
17) Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) was an Italian electric engineer who developed the first long-distance telegraph and broadcast a transatlantic radio signal for the first time in 1901.
16) Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923) was the first female to be elected as a member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1899. A pioneer in her field, she conducted experimental investigations on sand ripples, one of which validated Lord Rayleigh’s mathematical theory of vortices.
15) Tim Berners-Lee, born in London in 1955, is a computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web. He is the only living person on our list and winner of the 2013 Queen Elizabeth Prize!
14) Sir Joseph Bazalgette (1819-1891) was a civil engineer responsible for the creation of a network of sewers in response to the “Great Stink” of 1858, which drastically improved the health of Victorian Londoners.
13) Elijah McCoy (1844-1929) was a Canadian-American engineer who patented more than 57 inventions, mostly related to the lubrication of steam engines.
12) George Stephenson (1781-1848) was a civil and mechanical engineer. He is considered the “Father of Railways” having built locomotives for the very first railways.
11) Frank Whittle (1907-1966) was an English engineer and air officer who revolutionised the world of aviation by inventing the jet engine.
Check back tomorrow for the top 10 countdown! Let us know what your thoughts are by tweeting us @qeprize #engineeringhero
