Thomas Malcolm Charlton
Thomas Malcolm Charlton FRSE (1923–1997) was a British civil engineer and historian. He is remembered for several notable textbooks on structural issues. He was a great lover of railways and railway engines.
Life
He was born on the 1st September 1923, in South Normanton, Derbyshire, the son of William Charlton a mining engineer, and Emily May Wellbank. His early education was at Doncaster Grammar School and then Doncaster Technical College.[1]
His university education began in London University, graduating BSc in 1943, but was the interrupted by the Second World War, which also caused a relocation of studies to Nottingham University College (under Prof C H Bulleid). After graduating, he was then interviewed by C P Snow for a position as a Junior Scientific Officer in the Royal Radar Establishment at Great Malvern, and took up this position.
In 1946 he began work as an engineer and technical advisor in Newcastle. He stayed here for eight years. In 1954 Cambridge University offered him a Lectureship and he moved there with his young family. The university granted him an honorary MA degree in the same year. In 1963 he was offered a Professorship by Queens University in Belfast, and accepted, finding this a much more comfortable position.[2] At Belfast he became a member of many university committees, including the Buildings and General Policy Committee. In this role he famously condemned the concrete of university halls of residence, then under construction, as substandard, leading to their demolition. During the civil unrest in Northern Ireland he was asked to sit on the six person Advisory Council to the Ulster Defence Regiment under the chairmanship of General Sir John Anderson.
In 1970 Aberdeen University offered him a chair and he was Professor of Engineering there until retiral in 1979. An invitation to act as a visiting lecturer to Finland led to his being elected a Foreign Member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences. In 1973 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Upon retiral in 1979 he moved with his wife to Burwell, Cambridgeshire and continued to write. He died at Burwell on 1 February 1997.
Family
He married Valerie McCulloch in 1950. They had two sons: Richard who became a minister and Edward who joined the RAF.
Publications
See [3]
- Model Analysis of Structure (1954)
- Hydro-electric Engineering Practice (1958)
- Energy Principles in Applied Statics (1959)
- Principles of Structural Analysis (1969)
- Energy Theory in the Principles of Structures (1973)
- The Works of I K Brunel (1976)
- A History of the Theory of Structures in the Nineteenth Century (1982)
- Professor Emeritus (an autobiography) (1991)