Hubert Shirley-Smith

Sir Hubert Shirley-Smith, OBE, BSc, MICE (October 13, 1901 – February 10, 1981) was a British civil engineer.^[1]

Shirley-Smith is perhaps most famous for helping to design the Howrah Bridge in Calcutta for the Indian Public Works Department in 1943.^[2] He also served in the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps, an unpaid, volunteer Territorial Army unit which provides engineering expertise to the British Army and was gazetted as a Major of that corps on 6 October 1953^[3] In 1962 he worked as site agent for the ADC bridge company during construction of the Forth Road Bridge.^[4]

He served as president of the Institution of Civil Engineers from November 1967 to November 1968, during the 150th anniversary of that institution, and was made a Fellow of Imperial College, London in 1966^[5][6] Shirley-Smith was a consulting engineer and worked for W.V. Zinn & Associates of London from 1969 to 1978.^[7] During 1968 Shirley-Smith was president of the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering and helped to arrange the first joint-conferences of the Institution of Civil Engineers and the American Society of Civil Engineers.^[5]

Shirley-Smith was honoured with an appointment as a Knight Bachelor on 1 January 1969 in the Queen's New Year Honours, being knighted by the Queen at Buckingham Palace on 7 March 1969.^[8][9] He was appointed a first class engineer member of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers in 1969.^[10] Shirley-Smith was also an author and wrote The World's Great Bridges and the Encyclopaedia Britannica article on bridges.^[7] In 1971 he lived in Orpington in Kent.^[10] Shirley-Smith died on February 10, 1981.^[1]

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