Sir Alec Westley Skempton (4 June 1914 – 9 August 2001) was an English civil engineer internationally recognised, along with Karl Terzaghi, as one of the founding fathers of the engineering discipline of

soil mechanics Soil mechanics is a branch of soil physics and applied mechanics that describes the behavior of soils. It differs from fluid mechanics and solid mechanics in the sense that soils consist of a heterogeneous mixture of fluids (usually air and wa ...

. He established the soil mechanics course at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a ...

, where the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department's building was renamed after him in 2004, and was knighted in the

2000 New Year Honours The New Year Honours 2000 for the United Kingdom and New Zealand were announced on 31 December 1999, to celebrate the year passed and mark the beginning of 2000. The ''Honours list'' is a list of people who have been awarded one of the various or ...

for services to engineering. He was also a notable contributor on the history of British civil engineering.

Career

Skempton was born in Northampton and attended Northampton grammar school. In 1932 Skempton he went to the City and Guilds College in London to study civil engineering. After beginning work on a Goldsmiths' Company bursary-funded PhD, he joined the Building Research Station (BRS) in 1936, initially working on reinforced concrete before moving to soil mechanics in 1937. The failure of an earth embankment for a reservoir at

Chingford Chingford is a town in east London, England, within the London Borough of Waltham Forest. The town is approximately north-east of Charing Cross, with Waltham Abbey to the north, Woodford Green and Buckhurst Hill to the east, Walthamstow ...

in north-east London helped highlight Skempton's insights on clay strata. Other projects included

Waterloo Bridge Waterloo Bridge () is a road and foot traffic bridge crossing the River Thames in London, between Blackfriars Bridge and Hungerford Bridge and Golden Jubilee Bridges. Its name commemorates the victory of the British, Dutch and Prussians at t ...

, the Muirhead dam near

Largs Largs ( gd, An Leargaidh Ghallda) is a town on the Firth of Clyde in North Ayrshire, Scotland, about from Glasgow. The original name means "the slopes" (''An Leargaidh'') in Scottish Gaelic. A popular seaside resort with a pier, the town mark ...

in Scotland,

Gosport Gosport ( ) is a town and non-metropolitan borough on the south coast of Hampshire, South East England. At the 2011 Census, its population was 82,662. Gosport is situated on a peninsula on the western side of Portsmouth Harbour, opposite ...

Dockyard and the Eau Brink Cut channel of the

River Great Ouse The River Great Ouse () is a river in England, the longest of several British rivers called "Ouse". From Syresham in Northamptonshire, the Great Ouse flows through Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk to drain into the W ...

near

King's Lynn King's Lynn, known until 1537 as Bishop's Lynn and colloquially as Lynn, is a port and market town in the borough of King's Lynn and West Norfolk in the county of Norfolk, England. It is located north of London, north-east of Peterborough, ...

. In 1945, Skempton was seconded from BRS to establish a soil mechanics course at

Imperial College Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cul ...

(recruiting

Alan W. Bishop Alan Wilfred Bishop (27 May 1920 – 30 June 1988) was a British geotechnical engineer and academic, working at Imperial College London. He was known for the Bishop's method of analysing soil slopes. After his graduation from Emmanuel Colleg ...

as his first member of staff), becoming a full-time lecturer there in 1946, and introducing, in 1950, the first postgraduate course in soil mechanics. In 1955, he was elevated to the chair of soil mechanics, and from 1957 to 1976 was head of department and professor of civil engineering. He made great contributions in the field of quaternary geology and was widely consulted on problems involving landslips, foundations, retaining walls and embankments. Notable projects included the Mangla Dam in Pakistan and the Carsington Dam failure in Derbyshire in 1984.

Research

Skempton worked on many high-profile projects through his life, notably the back analysis of the Chingford reservoir failure (July 1937) and other embankment dams, including that at

Chew Valley Lake Chew Valley Lake () is a reservoir in Chew Stoke, Chew Valley, Somerset, England. It is the fifth-largest artificial lake in the United Kingdom, with an area of . The lake, created in the early 1950s, was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1956. ...

, for which he designed an array of sand-drains to accelerate consolidation of the weak alluvial foundations, the first such in the UK. In situ behaviour of natural clays was of great interest to Skempton, who wrote two papers published by the

Geological Society The Geological Society of London, known commonly as the Geological Society, is a learned society based in the United Kingdom. It is the oldest national geological society in the world and the largest in Europe with more than 12,000 Fellows. Fe ...

on the geological compaction of natural clays. Among other academic writings, he formulated concepts such as that of A and B pore water pressure coefficient which is still widely used today. Many of his research documents and other writing are available in the Skempton and Bishop Archives at Imperial College. He was a founding member of the

Institution of Civil Engineers The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) is an independent professional association for civil engineers and a charitable body in the United Kingdom. Based in London, ICE has over 92,000 members, of whom three-quarters are located in the UK, whi ...

' Soil Mechanics and Foundations committee (now the

British Geotechnical Association The British Geotechnical Association is a learned 'Associated Society' of the Institution of Civil Engineers,ICE Associated Societies newsletter, Spring/Summer 2011 (Accessed: 19 July 2013) based in London, England, and a registered UK charity (N ...

). Skempton was also an influential contributor to the history of civil engineering. He chaired the civil engineers archive panel at ICE where he edited works on

William Jessop William Jessop (23 January 1745 – 18 November 1814) was an English civil engineer, best known for his work on canals, harbours and early railways in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Early life Jessop was born in Devonport, Devon, the ...

(1979),

John Smeaton John Smeaton (8 June 1724 – 28 October 1792) was a British civil engineer responsible for the design of bridges, canals, harbours and lighthouses. He was also a capable mechanical engineer and an eminent physicist. Smeaton was the firs ...

(1981), regarded as the founder of civil engineering, and early fen drainage engineer John Grundy, and started work on the first volume of '' A Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers of the British Isles'', eventually published in 2002.

Honours and awards

UK

Skempton was a member of the Links Club of the City and Guilds College whilst at

. He delivered the 4th

Rankine Lecture The Rankine lecture is an annual lecture organised by the British Geotechnical Association named after William John Macquorn Rankine, an early contributor to the theory of soil mechanics. This should not be confused with the biennial BGA Géote ...

titled ''Long-term stability of clay slopes'' in 1964. In recognition of his soil mechanics contributions, in 2004, the department of Civil & Environmental Engineering building at Imperial College was renamed after him: the Skempton Building. Other accolades included Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, r ...

(1961) and Founding Fellow of the

Royal Academy of Engineering The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering. The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senior ...

. Skempton also accumulated medals from the ICE (the 1968

James Alfred Ewing Medal This is an award of the Institution of Civil Engineers in memory of James Alfred Ewing made by the Council on the joint nomination of the president and the President of the Royal Society. It is made to a person, whether a member of the Institution ...

), the Geological Society (the 1972 Lyell Medal), Newcomen Society, and a gold medal from the Institution of Structural Engineers ( IStructE). He was knighted for services to engineering in the 2000 New Year Honours.

International

Skempton was elected as the second President of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, following Terzaghi, in 1957. He also won the Terzaghi award from the

American Society of Civil Engineers American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

Career

Research

Honours and awards

UK

International

See also

References

Further reading