Benjamin Bevan (26 December 1773 — 2 July 1833) was a British

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...

, noted for his proof of the equivalence of the

elastic moduli An elastic modulus (also known as modulus of elasticity) is the unit of measurement of an object's or substance's resistance to being deformed elastically (i.e., non-permanently) when a stress is applied to it. The elastic modulus of an object is ...

of ice and water. He was a principal engineer on the

Grand Junction Canal The Grand Junction Canal is a canal in England from Braunston in Northamptonshire to the River Thames at Brentford, with a number of branches. The mainline was built between 1793 and 1805, to improve the route from the Midlands to London, by-p ...

. Bevan was born on

Boxing Day Boxing Day is a holiday celebrated after Christmas Day, occurring on the second day of Christmastide (26 December). Though it originated as a holiday to give gifts to the poor, today Boxing Day is primarily known as a shopping holiday. It ...

in 1773; his parents were Joseph Bevan, a yeoman of Ridgmont, and Mary Ravens. He inherited his father's farm and holdings at the age of nine. He had five children with his wife Mary Allen, whom he married in 1799. Prior to entering the engineering profession, he worked as a brewer, but was encouraged to take up engineering after meeting the geologist William Smith. In 1802 he completed his first engineering project; a redesign of the Lake Bridge at

Leighton Buzzard Leighton Buzzard ( ) is a market town in Bedfordshire, England, in the southwest of the county and close to the Buckinghamshire border. It lies between Aylesbury, Tring, Luton/Dunstable and Milton Keynes, near the Chiltern Hills. It is northwes ...

. Two years later he began working on canals, first working on the Wendover branch of the Grand Junction, and later taking over (along with John Woodhouse and Henry Provis) from the canal's original engineer James Barnes. On this canal, Bevan pioneered the use of iron as a material for aqueducts, constructing one of Britain's earliest iron aqueducts over 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 Wa ...

. The work he did on the Grand Junction led to his involvement in other canal construction projects, including the original Grand Union Canal and the

Newport Pagnell Canal The Newport Pagnell Canal was a 1.25 mile canal in Buckinghamshire that ran from the Grand Junction Canal at Great Linford to Newport Pagnell through seven canal lock, locks. Construction was authorised by an Act of Parliament in June 1814 and i ...

(although he declined the post of chief engineer for the

Wey and Arun Canal The Wey and Arun Canal is a partially open, 23-mile-long (37 km) canal in the southeast of England. It runs southwards from the River Wey at Gunsmouth in Shalford, Surrey to the River Arun at Pallingham, in West Sussex. The canal compris ...

). He did extensive

surveying Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is ca ...

work, looking at means of creating navigable stretches of the River Ivel and River Nene, and proposing canals between Market Harborough and Stamford and a branch out as far as Taunton. His survey of Deeping Fen resulted in an Act allowing the provision of

steam engine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be trans ...

s for drainage, one of the earliest uses of steam power for this purpose. In later life, he developed an interest in materials science and meteorology, writing numerous scientific papers. He served on the committee which established the London Mechanics' Institution, and introduced George Birkbeck as the chair. He died from heart failure on 2 July 1833 whilst observing a

lunar eclipse A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon moves into the Earth's shadow. Such alignment occurs during an eclipse season, approximately every six months, during the full moon phase, when the Moon's orbital plane is closest to the plane of the Earth ...

, and was interred at Ridgmont.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bevan, Benjamin British hydrologists British civil engineers 1773 births 1833 deaths