Anne Neville (21 March 1970 – 2 July 2022) was 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 senio ...

Chair in

emerging technologies Emerging technologies are technology, technologies whose development, practical applications, or both are still largely unrealized. These technologies are generally innovation, new but also include old technologies finding new applications. Emer ...

and Professor of

Tribology Tribology is the science and engineering of understanding friction, lubrication and wear phenomena for interacting surfaces in relative Motion (physics), motion. It is highly interdisciplinary, drawing on many academic fields, including physics, c ...

and Surface Engineering at the

University of Leeds The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was established in 1874 as the Yorkshire College of Science. In 1884, it merged with the Leeds School of Medicine (established 1831) and was renamed Y ...

.Anne Neville

Early life and education

Anne Neville grew up in Dumfries with her older sister Linda. Their mother Doris worked as a pharmacy technician and their father Bill was a process worker at ICI Dumfries. Her uncle is Professor Robert Black,

Emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

Professor of

Scots Law Scots law () is the List of country legal systems, legal system of Scotland. It is a hybrid or mixed legal system containing Civil law (legal system), civil law and common law elements, that traces its roots to a number of different histori ...

at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

. Anne attended Maxwellton High School where her interest in maths and physics grew. Anne was also a good badminton player and played the trumpet. Anne Neville was educated at Maxwelltown High School in

Dumfries Dumfries ( ; ; from ) is a market town and former royal burgh in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, near the mouth of the River Nith on the Solway Firth, from the Anglo-Scottish border. Dumfries is the county town of the Counties of Scotland, ...

and was unsure what she should do at university, at one point considered becoming a social worker. She went into engineering by accident. The Glasgow University prospectus fell open at the page with a Rolls-Royce gas turbine picture and she thought it looked interesting. Anne Neville's maths teacher was a mechanical engineer and he inspired her to investigate further. After visiting the university open days, Anne Neville decided that she wanted to study engineering and rejected her earlier initial thoughts of either studying maths or physics. Anne Neville began her studies at the

University of Glasgow The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals; ) is a Public university, public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the List of oldest universities in continuous ...

in 1988 and she graduated in 1992 with a First Class Honours BEng degree followed by

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in mechanical engineering in 1995. As part of her PhD, she conducted an experimental study of

corrosion Corrosion is a natural process that converts a refined metal into a more chemically stable oxide. It is the gradual deterioration of materials (usually a metal) by chemical or electrochemical reaction with their environment. Corrosion engine ...

and tribocorrosion processes on high alloy stainless steels and Ni-alloys and her work led to an increased understanding of the synergies that exist between corrosion and wear processes.

Career and research

Anne Neville was a mechanical engineer with a specific interest in

tribology Tribology is the science and engineering of understanding friction, lubrication and wear phenomena for interacting surfaces in relative Motion (physics), motion. It is highly interdisciplinary, drawing on many academic fields, including physics, c ...

and processes that occur at engineering interfaces. She was appointed a lecturer at

Heriot-Watt University Heriot-Watt University () is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was established in 1821 as the School of Arts of Edinburgh, the world's first mechanics' institute, and was subsequently granted university status by roya ...

immediately after her PhD and started to build a research team. Anne Neville's contributions were manifold, across lubrication and wear, mineral scaling and tribo-corrosion, with applications in diverse fields such as the oil and gas sector, wind energy and tribo-corrosion and surgical technologies. In particular, her group were the first to measure corrosion rates in-situ in hip joint simulators which made important contributions to the work associated with the controversies associated with metal-on-metal hip implants. In 2009 and 2013 Anne's work was used to guide the medical health authorities in the UK on what to do with a hip prostheses that had shown unacceptably high failure rates in patients. They used advanced microscopy x-ray spectroscopy to understand how surfaces are lubricated in industrial and medical components. Her research team grew to 25 researchers in the following years during her time at Heriot Watt University and in 1999 she was promoted to Reader and then

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

in 2002. Anne Neville and her group moved to

Leeds Leeds is a city in West Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in Yorkshire and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds Metropolitan Borough, which is the second most populous district in the United Kingdom. It is built aro ...

in 2003 where she founded and was the Director of the Institute of Functional Surfaces (iFS) which comprised 70 researchers. The institute had a £10 million funding portfolio that spanned many agencies and industrial sectors including medical, oil and gas and automotive. Her research group was the first to measure corrosion rates in-situ in hip joint simulators. This was very important in the most recent controversies around metal-on-metal implants. Anne Neville's publications were numerous, widely relied upon, and she published nearly 700 peer-reviewed articles during her career, with more than 11,000 citations. Neville retired from her Leeds chair in 2020, having been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Awards and honours

Anne Neville was the first woman to win the Royal Society of Edinburgh's 150 year old Makdougall Brisbane prize in

1999 1999 was designated as the International Year of Older Persons. Events January * January 1 – The euro currency is established and the European Central Bank assumes its full powers. * January 3 – The Mars Polar Lander is launc ...

and was an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Advanced

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

from 1999 to 2004, elected a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (FIMechE) in 2007, elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and Literature, letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". ...

(FRSE) in 2005, elected a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining in 2009 and a

Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) is an award and Scholarship, fellowship for engineers who are recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as being the best and brightest engineers, inventors and technologists in United K ...

(FREng) in 2010. She was awarded Institution of Mechanical Engineers Donald Julius Green prize in 2010, a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award in 2011, the Donald Julius Groen Prize for Tribology in 2012, the 2014 STLE Wilbert Shultz Prize, Royal Society Wolfson Research MERIT Award in 2013 and was selected as an EPSRC RISE Fellow in 2014 which was an honour bestowed on the best established and future leaders in engineering and physical sciences. In 2015, Neville was awarded an Engineering and Physical Sciences Suffrage Science award. She was the first woman to be awarded the Institute of Mechanical Engineers' James Clayton Prize and she was also the first woman to win the Royal Society's Leverhulme Medal in 2016 for "revealing diverse physical and chemical processes at interacting interfaces, emphasising significant synergy between

and

.” Anne Neville was appointed OBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to engineering. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2017. Anne Neville received the following

honorary degree An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad hon ...

s: * DEng, Heriot Watt University, 2017 * DEng, University of Glasgow, 2019 Neville was awarded the Royal Society's Clifford Patterson Medal in 2022. She was posthumously inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame in October 2022.

Personal life

Anne Neville married Mark McKelvie in 1999 and their daughter Rachel was born in 2005.

Views

Neville believed that more women in engineering could be achieved by ensuring that at primary school level we have the same number of girls and boys engaging with technology. "Male or female… go for it! You will have the time of your life. I can honestly say I love my job. As an academic in engineering I can do what I want in terms of research as long as I can raise the funds to pay for it. This is a real privilege. I have travelled the world, met some brilliant people and have had great fun. What else could you ask for in a job?"

Death

Anne Neville was first diagnosed with cancer in 2008. Neville died at her home on 2 July 2022.Notice of death
ForStaff.leeds.ac.uk. 19 July 2022. Accessed 30 December 2022.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Neville, Anne 1970 births 2022 deaths Officers of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Royal Society Female fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Female fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh People educated at Maxwelltown High School British mechanical engineers Academics of the University of Leeds Alumni of the University of Glasgow 21st-century British women engineers Tribologists Academics of Heriot-Watt University Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame inductees