ABSTRACT
WHEN I received the invitation of the Council of the Institution to deliver this Lecture, I felt that its acceptance was almost a pious duty to the memory of my distinguished predecessor, who from 1884 until 1904 occupied the Chair of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at the Central Technical College of the City and Guilds Institute. The praising of famous men, to which we are exhorted, requires much skill, knowledge, and tact, and my pleasure at the honour implied by the invitation was largely tempered by vivid awareness of my inadequacy for the task. It would be, I think, a little presumptuous and certainly superfluous to attempt a lengthy eulogy of William Cawthorne Unwin. His work stands for all time as his true memorial, and I think that Miss Unwin was wise when, in her bequest to the Institution, she stipulated that this Memorial Lecture should deal with engineering research. Engineers, however distinguished, must pass, but the influence of their work on future generations can provide an enduring fame which no form of words, however eloquent, will achieve.
