Hugh Ford
Hugh Ford (1913-2010), Professor of mechanical engineering, Imperial College London
1913 July 16th. Born
Educated at Northampton Grammar School and served an apprenticeship at the Great Western Railway.
He studied at City & Guilds College (Imperial College London) on a Whitworth scholarship, where he would earn a first class degree, and win the Bramwell Medal. He earned a PhD in heat transfer and fluid flow.
During World War II, he worked at ICI in Cheshire. He studied operations at strip mills, earning the Thomas Hawksley Gold Medal in 1948.
Beginning in 1948, he was Reader in Applied Mechanics at Imperial College. He was president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers from 1977 to 1978. Ford was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society[1] in 1967 and knighted in 1975. In 1970, he received the A. A. Griffith Medal and Prize. He was awarded an honorary degree (Doctor of Science) from the University of Bath in 1978. In 1985 he received the James Watt International Medal.
2010 May 28th. Died.
1965 Bio Note [1]
Prof. Hugh Ford, DSc(Eng), PhD, Wh.Sch. (Member), has been appointed Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College, in succession to Prof. Sir Owen Saunders, DSc(Eng), MA (Past-President), who will now devote more of his time to research. The appointment will take effect from 1st January 1966.
Prof. Ford, who was recently re-elected to Council, joined the staff of the College in 1948 as Reader in Applied Mechanics. He was elected to the Chair in that subject in 1953.
A member of the CME Advisory Panel, Prof. Ford is also Vice-Chairman of the Editorial Panel of the Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science. He is the holder of a Thomas Hawksley Gold Medal and a James Clayton Prize, both awarded by this Institution.