Sir Alfred Grenville Pugsley, FRS (13 May 1903 – 7 March 1998) was a British structural engineer. He was born in Wimbledon and studied engineering at Battersea Polytechnic, followed by working as a civil engineering student at Woolwich Arsenal. In 1926 he moved to work in R&D at the Royal Airship Works at

Cardington, Bedfordshire Cardington is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Bedford in Bedfordshire, England. Part of the ancient hundred of Wixamtree, the settlement is best known in connection with the Cardington airship works founded by Short Brothers duri ...

, where he was involved in the development of the R101 airship. In 1931 he transferred to the

Royal Aircraft Establishment The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), bef ...

(RAE) at Farnborough, where he was concerned with the behaviour of aircraft wings. In 1941 he was made head of the structural and mechanical engineering department at RAE and awarded an OBE in 1944. After the Second World War he was appointed Professor of Civil Engineering at the

University of Bristol The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...

becoming Emeritus Professor in 1968. During this time he developed the concepts of safety in engineering, becoming an authority on metal fatigue in aircraft and the safe design of suspension bridges. He was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

in 1952. and knighted in 1956. In 1957 he was elected President of the

Institution of Structural Engineers The Institution of Structural Engineers is a British professional body for structural engineers. In 2021, it had 29,900 members operating in 112 countries. It provides professional accreditation and publishes a magazine, '' The Structural Eng ...

and in 1968 awarded their

Gold Medal A gold medal is a medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture. Since the eighteenth century, gold medals have b ...

"in recognition of his services to the Institution and for originating a general philosophy of structural safety based on a statistical analysis of the probability of failure". In 1968 his report on the

Ronan Point Ronan Point was a 22-storey tower block in Canning Town in Newham, East London, that partially collapsed on 16 May 1968, only two months after it opened. A gas explosion blew out some load-bearing walls, causing the collapse of one entire corn ...

disaster, when a system built tower block in London partly collapsed, caused the building industry to review its techniques and procedures. In 1979 he was presented with the James Alfred Ewing Medal by the Institution of Civil Engineers. He wrote a number of books based on his work, including: *''Concepts of Safety in Structural Engineering'' (1951) *''The Theory of Suspension Bridges'' (1957) *''The Safety of Structures'' (1966) *''The Works of Isambard Kingdom Brunel'' (1980) *''The non-linear behaviour of a suspended cable'' (1983)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pugsley, Alfred Grenville, Sir 1903 births 1998 deaths People from Wimbledon, London British structural engineers Presidents of the Institution of Structural Engineers Fellows of the Royal Society Knights Bachelor IStructE Gold Medal winners Alumni of the University of Surrey Engineers from London Officers_of_the_Order_of_the_British_Empire