25 Facts About Alfred Ewing

Alfred Ewing's first wife, Annie, was an American, a great great niece of George Washington.

Alfred Ewing was educated at West End Academy and the High School of Dundee, Ewing showed an early interest in science and technology.

Alfred Ewing won a scholarship to the University of Edinburgh where he studied physics under Peter Guthrie Tait before graduating in engineering.

In 1878, on Fleeming Jenkin's recommendation, Alfred Ewing was recruited to help the modernisation of Meiji Era Japan as one of the o-yatoi gaikokujin.

Alfred Ewing made two special friends at Tokyo University soon after arriving: Basil Hall Chamberlain and Lieutenant Thomas Henry James RN, who taught navigation.

Alfred Ewing was in close contact with Henry Dyer and William Edward Ayrton at the Imperial College of Engineering.

In Tokyo, Alfred Ewing taught courses on mechanics and heat engines to engineering students, and on electricity and magnetism to physics students.

Alfred Ewing carried out many research projects on magnetism and coined the word 'hysteresis'.

Alfred Ewing joined Gray and Milne in founding the Seismological Society of Japan in 1880.

In 1883, Alfred Ewing returned to his native Dundee to work at the recently established University College Dundee as its first Professor of Engineering.

Alfred Ewing was appalled by the living conditions he found in many of the poorer areas of the town which he felt compared unfavourably with those in Japan.

Alfred Ewing worked fervently with local government and industry to improve amenities, in particular sewer systems, and to lower the infant mortality rate.

Some letters Alfred Ewing wrote at this time are now held by Archive Services, University of Dundee along with some of his other papers.

The Alfred Ewing Building is currently part of the University's School of Science and Engineering.

In 1890, Alfred Ewing took up the post of Professor of Mechanism and Applied Mechanics at the University of Cambridge, initially at Trinity College, though he later moved to King's College.

Alfred Ewing described the characteristic hysteresis curve and speculated that individual molecules act as magnets, resisting changes in magnetising potential.

Alfred Ewing researched into the crystalline structure of metals and, in 1903, was the first to propose that fatigue failures originated in microscopic defects or slip bands in materials.

Alfred Ewing was a close friend of Sir Charles Algernon Parsons and collaborated with him on the development of the steam turbine.

In 1898, Alfred Ewing took his wife and children to Switzerland for a mountaineering holiday with the family of noted Professor of Electrical Engineering at King's College, John Hopkinson.

Alfred Ewing decided not to go with them as he was feeling a little stiff after his climb the previous day.

In 1898 Alfred Ewing was elected to a Professorial Fellowship at King's College.

Alfred Ewing married Anne Maria Thomasina Blackburn Washington on 14 May 1879 in Tokyo, Japan.

Alfred Ewing had two children with his first wife: Maud Janet Wills, nee Ewing and Alfred Washington Ewing.

In May 1916 Alfred Ewing accepted an invitation to become Principal of the University of Edinburgh, in the course of which he instituted an extensive series of effective reforms and which he held until his retirement in 1929.

Sir Alfred Ewing died in 1935 and is buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge, with his second wife Lady Ellen Ewing, the daughter of John Hopkinson.