The Institution of Engineers in Scotland paid tribute, at its recent Annual General Meeting, to His Royal Highness Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.
The Institution of Engineers in Scotland paid tribute, at its recent Annual General Meeting, to His Royal Highness Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. The institution was honoured in 1955 when His Royal Highness accepted an Honorary Membership, presented to him at the Palace of Holyroodhouse by the IESIS President, Professor Andrew Robb, accompanied by Viscount Weir and Sir Harold Yarrow who were both also Honorary Members. The Duke was always interested in the mechanics of how things worked and was a staunch supporter of all branches of engineering. He served as President of the Council Of Engineering Institutions from 1965 and played an active role in the creation of professional registration grades for engineers from all disciplines as Chartered Engineers. He was instrumental in the founding of the Fellowship of Engineering in 1976, later overseeing its transition to become the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1992. He was a supporter of the MacRobert Award, the UK’s longest-running and most prestigious prize for engineering innovation, and inaugurated the Prince Philip medal in 1989 for “an engineer of any nationality who has made an exceptional contribution to engineering as a whole through practice, management or education” and the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering in 2012. As engineers we owe him a great debt of gratitude for his work in raising the image and profile of engineering as a worthy and worthwhile career. In 2015 the Duke wrote “Engineering is not just a profession to be learned and practised as a way of making a living. It is one of the few ways in which human talent can be given the chance to improve, and frequently to transform, the comfort and prosperity of the human community. In fact, engineering has made a greater positive difference to human life than almost any other human endeavour."