W.J.M. Rankine, 1820-1872 - The Making of Engineering Science in Victorian Culture

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820-1872) is a major figure in the history of nineteenth-century science and engineering. As well as being a successful railway and hydraulic engineer, he was largely responsible for the establishment of ''engineering science'' as the core of a new academic discipline separate from that of practical engineering. Beginning with his birth in Edinburgh in 1820 this book - the first full length biography of Rankine - traces his Scottish schooling, his engineering apprenticeship in Ireland, his early years as railway and hydraulic engineer in the 1840s, his emergence as a distinctive scientific voice in the 1850s, and his career as a university professor in Glasgow.