Memorial to the late Dr. W. C. Unwin

Abstract

BY the older engineers of the present day, the late Prof. W. C. Unwin will be remembered as an outstanding figure in the fields of engineering education and the practical application of scientific principles to the needs of civil and mechanical engineers. In his long career, which covered the latter half of the last century and the first quarter of the present, he witnessed the greater part of the evolution of engineering as we know it to-day, and in all the branches of the profession with which he was more directly concerned he occupied a pre-eminent position. He died on March 17, 1933, aged ninety-four years; an appreciation of his life and work appeared in NATURE of May 13, 1933 (p. 681). A representative committee, under the chairmanship of Sir Alfred Chatterton, of Unwin's friends and old students, supported by representatives of the Royal Society, the principal British and American engineering societies and of the educational organisations with which he was connected, has now been formed for the purpose of establishing a suitable memorial. The committee is endeavouring to raise funds for the founding of an Unwin scholarship at the City and Guilds (Engineering) College, of which Unwin was the first professor of civil and mechanical engineering and the first dean, and to publish a biographical memoir based upon the one which was published in the Unwin Memorial issue of the Central, the journal of the City and Guilds College Old Students' Association, and so make available a record which so far has only been published for private circulation. Fuller particulars of the Committee's proposal can be obtained from the joint honorary secretaries, Messrs. G. A. Hicks and J. Severs, c/o The Institution of Civil Engineers, Great George Street, S.W.I, and contributions to the fund should be sent to the honorary treasurer, Mr. E. G. Walker, 82 Victoria Street, London, S.W.1.