Sir Hugh Eyre Campbell Beaver, KBE (4 May 1890 – 16 January 1967) was an English-South African civil engineer, industrialist, and founder of the ''

Guinness World Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...

'' (then known as Guinness Book of Records).

Biography

Beaver spent two years in the Indian police from 1910 and returned to England in 1921, joining the civil engineering firm

Sir Alexander Gibb & Partners Sir Alexander Gibb & Partners was a British firm of consulting civil engineers, based at Queen Anne's Lodge, Queen Anne's Gate and subsequently Telford House, Tothill Street, Westminster, London, until 1974, when it relocated to Earley House, 427 ...

, as the personal assistant of

Sir Alexander Gibb ''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as p ...

. During World War II he was Director-General in the newly formed Ministry of Works. He died of heart failure in London on 16th January 1967.

Air pollution work

After the Great Smog of 1952 he was appointed as chair of the Committee on Air Pollution, known as the Beaver Committee, investigating the severe air pollution problem in London. In 1954 the committee reported results which led to effective action, in part due to a shift in public opinion.

References

External links

History of the Guinness World Records - Official SiteCatalogue
of the papers of Sir Hugh Beaver a
Portrait at the National Portrait gallery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beaver, Sir Hugh 1890 births 1967 deaths People from Johannesburg People educated at Wellington College, Berkshire Businesspeople awarded knighthoods Knights Bachelor Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Indian Police Service officers in British India Presidents of the Royal Statistical Society South African emigrants to the United Kingdom 20th-century English businesspeople