80 Facts About William Glanville

Sir William Henry Glanville CB CBE FRS was a British civil engineer.

William Glanville worked on the explosives calculations and scale models used to develop the bouncing bombs used in the Dam Busters Raid.

William Glanville was widely recognised for his contributions to engineering and, amongst a string of professional awards, was appointed as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, as a Companion of the Order of the Bath and knighted.

William Glanville was born on 1 February 1900 in Willesden, Middlesex, the second child, and only son, of Amelia and William Glanville.

William Glanville's father was originally from Cornwall and worked as a builder.

William Glanville's did not distinguish himself at the school except in his ability in shooting, at which he represented the school in competitions at the National Rifle Association's ranges in Bisley, Surrey and won several prizes.

William Glanville excelled at university and graduated top of his year, with first class honours in 1922.

William Glanville was only the third person employed by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research to undertake research work at the underfunded station which was established in April 1921.

William Glanville found that concrete became much more impermeable when cured by immersion in water, compared with the more popular air curing method.

William Glanville continued his work in this field, investigating the bond between concrete and steel reinforcement, shrinkage of the material and creep and flow under load.

William Glanville's work was among the first scientific research into reinforced concrete, the design and installation of which had previously been governed almost entirely by practical experience rather than scientific theory.

William Glanville's became an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1925.

William Glanville was appointed head of the BRS' engineering section in 1928.

William Glanville's responsibilities encompassed all of the BRS's engineering work including the management of its research, development of equipment and investigations of structural failures as well maintenance and expansion of the station.

William Glanville continued his own research into concrete and received, in 1930, a DSc degree from the University of London.

The report, drawing heavily on William Glanville's research, was published in 1933 and later incorporated into British Standards code 114.

William Glanville's research covered almost every aspect of concrete use in construction and included shrinkage stresses, creeping, and permeability as well as work on indeterminate structures, timber roofs, and curved bracing members.

William Glanville was appointed a member of the ICE research sub-committee on reinforced concrete reservoirs in 1934.

William Glanville remained at the research station until 1936 when he was asked to become deputy director of the Road Research Laboratory in Harmondsworth.

William Glanville became a full member of the ICE in 1934.

William Glanville retained an interest in concrete as a material throughout the rest of his career.

At the RRL William Glanville took on an increasingly more administrative role, devolving research to his assistants, however he still found time to undertake a comprehensive study of the performance of concrete roads.

William Glanville established a section of the laboratory to work exclusively on soil mechanics, a subject which was beginning to come to the fore of building and infrastructure design.

William Glanville was appointed assistant director of the RRL in 1936 and director in 1939.

William Glanville moved with the RRL to share facilities with the Radio Research Station during the Munich crisis of 1938 as the War Office took over their Harmondsworth facility.

William Glanville insisted on the title being amended from Director of the Road Research Laboaratory to "Director of Road Research", as he believed his remit should encompass all roads research within the DSIR.

William Glanville sought to bring this within the RRL but disagreements between the Ministry of Transport and DSIR on how the committee's recommendations should be implemented meant that nothing was achieved before the Second World War broke out.

At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 William Glanville was put in charge of the research and experiments department of the Ministry of Home Security as chief scientific adviser at the Princes Risborough station.

William Glanville was granted authority to assign additional staff to the programme and received staff from the BRS and the National Physical Laboratory.

William Glanville acted as an advisor to the Air Ministry and the Ministry of Aircraft Production on the construction of concrete runways and specialised airfields.

The soil section of the BRS, assisted by William Glanville, was responsible for the assessment and categorisation of European beaches prior to the Normandy Landings.

The soil section, which William Glanville set up, was particularly useful to the war effort with soil analysis impacting aircraft and tank designs.

William Glanville had a particular interest in explosives and he helped Edward Terrell of the Admiralty's DMWD develop a stone-chip-and-bitumen protective plating "plastic armour" which was installed on the bridges and gun positions of most allied merchant vessels.

The material supplied proved unsatisfactory but William Glanville recommended that the fine grit used in the samples be replaced by larger stone particles.

William Glanville was named on the patent for the material, alongside Terrell in September 1940.

William Glanville led investigations into the effects of explosions on earth and concrete structures, becoming a pioneer in the wider use of scale models in this field.

William Glanville's department developed smoke screens to protect high-priority targets from bombardment and studied how vibrations, for example from digging equipment used by bomb disposal teams, could trigger German anti-handling devices.

William Glanville was responsible for calculating the correct explosives charge and for the use of scale models to test the theory on.

William Glanville worked on bituminous surfacing materials and settlement in embankment which he continued after the war, leading to Road Note 29, the structural design standard for roads.

In 1943 the road safety research question resurfaced and William Glanville held discussions with DSIR on the role that the RRL could play in post-war road safety research.

William Glanville sought to make the Road Research Board more independent of the MOT and successfully proposed Sir Clement Hindley as chair in 1943, though he died in May 1944.

In November 1944 William Glanville had discussions with representatives from DSIR the Ministry of War Transport and the Ministry of Transport to determine how research should be carried out in the post war years.

William Glanville correctly predicted a post-war rise in the use of motor transport, though it was an even greater increase than he predicted.

William Glanville sought to smooth relations with the MOT in the post-war years and instructed his staff that any requests for advice from the MOT should be given top priority.

The RRL under William Glanville investigated the layout of road networks and town planning and the properties of road construction materials and became renowned as the leading road organisation in the world.

William Glanville declined numerous opportunities to leave the RRL to take up university professorships and senior positions in industry or with the Ministry of Transport; these all offered higher salaries.

William Glanville summed up his approach to research, saying that it must "be weighed in the balance of practical experience and application; that the problems of the research engineer are revealed by the difficulties of practice; and that to make his full contribution the researcher must follow these problems into the realm of practice".

William Glanville sought to involve practicing professional in his research, seeking to tailor his research to the needs of the construction industry.

William Glanville was a firm believer in the relative independence of DSIR and its research stations from ministerial control.

William Glanville promoted the use of research boards within DSIR through which the activities of each research station could be directed.

William Glanville was critical of the Trend Report for a perceived lack of hard evidence for its conclusions.

William Glanville stated "its views are simply a series of assertions and, in view of the subject it was considering, such an unscientific approach is outstanding".

William Glanville considered that the problem with the RRL was that ministers did not direct the laboratory to carry out research in the appropriate areas prior to making policy decisions, he considered a solution would be to have an RRL representative involved in consultations at the policy-making stage.

William Glanville considered that the move to IRDA would further remove the RRL from policy-making and exacerbate the current problems.

William Glanville was concerned that separating the RRL further from government would reduce its standing with the local authorities and police forces and prevent the sharing of confidential information from these parties.

William Glanville was critical of the proposal to bring the RRL under the MoT as it would involve a second layer of scientific staff working for the MoT who would need to interpret the output of the RRL for ministers, Glanville preferred that the RRL be directly consulted.

William Glanville was unable to present evidence to the Trend committee and there was an apparent political desire to abolish DSIR.

William Glanville was involved with many professional institutions and other bodies.

William Glanville had many contacts abroad through his road research and chaired the Institution of Civil Engineers committee which organised the biennial overseas conference.

William Glanville was elected President of the ICE in November 1950 and such was his popularity in that office that there was a movement amongst members to waive the law that limits presidents to one term that had long been in the statute books.

William Glanville was a member of the organising committee of several road related bodies as well as the International Society for Soil Mechanics in 1957 and the ICE conference on civil engineering problems overseas from 1952 to 1970.

William Glanville served on the British Standards codes of practice committee from 1940 to 1965, on the Royal Engineers' advisory board from 1950 to 1965, and on the board of the British Nuclear Energy Conference from 1953 to 1958.

William Glanville was a member of the Civil Engineering Research Council and its later incarnations, and in 1969 was president of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers.

In 1965, at the age of 65, William Glanville retired from the directorship of the RRL and established a private civil and structural engineering consultancy.

William Glanville noted that the field of road research had changed from 1955 when the RRL was the only body, to one in which the MOT, universities, the Medical Research Council, the Motor Industries Research Association, the Policem the Overseas Development Ministry, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, and industry bodies were all carrying out research.

William Glanville stressed the need for this research to be directed by a single body in a way that the RRB was not.

William Glanville proposed a Highway Research Council be established to fill this role, in a similar manner to the Highway Research Board in the US, and the RRB dissolved.

William Glanville was asked by the president of the International Road Federation to serve as their consultant, a service he provided for ten years, and organised the papers presented at their world meetings in London and Washington.

William Glanville was the federation's European representative to their survey of research into roads carried out across 72 counties.

William Glanville acted as an expert witness for the Ministry of Transport and the Department of the Environment in court cases and worked as an arbitrator.

William Glanville died suddenly of a stroke, on 30 June 1976, at his home in Northwood, Middlesex.

William Glanville obtained the degrees of PhD in 1925 and DSc in 1930 in the course of his work at the BRS.

William Glanville was recognised by the government for his important work and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1944 New Year Honours, a Companion of the Order of the Bath in the 1953 New Year Honours, and was knighted in the 1960 New Year Honours.

William Glanville was awarded the Institution of Structural Engineers Gold Medal in 1962 and was a fellow of that institution.

William Glanville received the Viva Shield and gold medal of the Worshipful Company of Carmen in 1965.

William Glanville was an honorary member of the Institutions of Municipal Engineers, Highway Engineers and Royal Engineers, and of the Concrete Society.

William Glanville was a fellow and governor of Queen Mary College, London, and almoner, governor of Christ's Hospital, Horsham and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1958.

William Glanville received the Ewing Gold Medal of the ICE for his research work.

William Glanville married Millient Carr on 20 June 1930 by whom he had a daughter and a son.

William Glanville is featured on a plaque on Imperial College London's Skempton Building, which houses its Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.