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Remarkable Engineers: From Riquet to Shannon

Ioan James
Publisher: 
Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: 
2010
Number of Pages: 
201
Format: 
Paperback
Price: 
34.99
ISBN: 
9780521731652
Category: 
General
[Reviewed by
John D. Cook
, on
05/14/2010
]

In his book Remarkable Engineers: From Riquet to Shannon, Ioan James gives brief accounts of the lives of 51 engineers. (Well, 50 engineers if you believe, as apparently many do, that Wilbur and Orville Wright were one person.) Each biography is between two and six pages long.

Because the biographies are quite short, a large proportion of these biographies are devoted to the vital facts of the subject’s life: when they were born, who they married, how many children they had, etc. As a result, there isn’t as much space devoted to their engineering careers as one might expect. This is particularly the case with the earliest biographies. Since less is known about these men, the author may have intentionally added more familial details to stretch some of these chapters a bit to keep the chapters a uniform length.

Remarkable Engineers is filled with variety. Some of the engineers, such as George Cayley and Werner von Braun, were born into aristocratic families. Others, such as Andrei Tupolev and Sergei Korolev, spent years as political prisoners inside the Soviet Gulag. Most of the featured engineers were men, though the book includes biographies of Hertha Ayrton and Edith Clarke. The book includes three father-son pairs: Marc and Isambard Brunel, Lazare and Sadi Carnot, George and Robert Stephenson. Some, such as the Wright brothers, never went to college. Others, such as Claude Shannon, were college professors.

Because the boundaries between engineering and other areas are fuzzy, some of the engineers may also be classified as businessmen (Thomas Edison), scientists (William Thomson), or mathematicians (Claude Shannon). In the popular imagination, the distinction between science and engineering is particularly fuzzy; famous engineers, such as Werner von Braun, are often called “scientists” and famous engineering projects, such as the Apollo program or the Manhattan Project, are thought of as scientific achievements. Perhaps books like Ioan James’ Remarkable Engineers and Henry Petroski’s The Essential Engineer will educate the public about the differences between science and engineering and raise the prestige of engineers.


John D. Cook is a research statistician at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and blogs daily at The Endeavour.

Part I. From Peter Paul Riquet to James Watt: Peter Paul Riquet (1604–1680); Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban (1633–1707); James Brindley (1716–1772); John Smeaton (1724–1792); James Watt (1736–1819); Part II. From William Jessop to Marc Brunel: William Jessop (1745–1814); Lazare Carnot (1753–1823); Thomas Telford (1757–1834); John Rennie (1761–1821); Sir Marc Isambard Brunel (1769–1849); Part III. From Richard Trevithick to Sadi Carnot: Richard Trevithick (1771–1833); Sir George Cayley (1773–1857); George Stephenson (1781–1848); Charles Babbage (1792–1871); Charles Vignoles (1793–1875); Sadi Carnot (1796–1832); Part IV. From Joseph Henry to Sir Joseph William Bazalgette: Joseph Henry (1797–1878); John Ericsson (1803–1899); Robert Stephenson (1803–1859); Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859); John Roebling (1806–1869); Sir Joseph William Bazalgette (1819–1891); Part V. From James Buchanan Eads to Alexander Graham Bell: James Buchanan Eads (1820–1887); William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) (1824–1907); Gustav Eiffel (1832–1923); George Westinghouse (1846–1914); Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931); Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922); Part VI. From Ferdinand Braun to Heinrich Hertz: Ferdinand Braun (1850–1918); Hertha Ayrton (1854–1923); Charles Parsons (1854–1931); Granville Woods (1856–1910); Nikola Tesla (1856–1943); Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894); Part VII. From Rudolf Diesel to Guglielmo Marconi: Rudolf Diesel (1858–1913); Elmer Sperry (1860–1930); Wilbur Wright (1867–1912) and Orville Wright (1871–1948); Frederick Lanchester (1868–1946); Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937); Part VIII. From Peter Pal'chinskii to Vladimir Zworykin: Peter Pal'chinskii (1875–1929); Edith Clarke (1883–1958); Andrei Tupolev (1888–1972); John Logie Baird (1888–1946); Vladimir Zworykin (1889–1982); Part IX. From Dennis Gabor to Claude Shannon: Dennis Gabor (1900–1979); Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (1906–1966); Frank Whittle (1907–1996); William Shockley (1910–1989); Wernher von Braun (1912–1977); Claude Shannon (1916–2001).