Sir Hubert Shirley-Smith

Sir Hubert Shirley-Smith (born October 13, 1901, London, England—died February 10, 1981, London) was a British civil engineer who designed steel bridges in many parts of the world and was a noted writer on engineering topics.

One year after he graduated from the City and Guilds of London Institute (1922), Shirley-Smith joined the engineering firm of Sir Douglas Fox and Partners (later Freeman, Fox, and Partners), where he was involved in the design of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. During the 1930s he worked on the design of bridges in northern England, Rhodesia, and India, and during World War II he set up the shipyard where tank-landing craft were constructed for the Normandy Invasion. In 1951 he joined the board of the U.K.-based Cleveland Bridge Co. and traveled to sites in Africa, Asia, and Australasia. Shirley-Smith worked on the Rovaniem Bridge in Finland, did structural designs for the London Shell Centre, and worked on the Forth Road Bridge, which spans the Firth of Forth in Scotland.

(Read Sir John Keegan’s Britannica entry on the Normandy Invasion.)

In 1953 he published The World’s Great Bridges. Shirley-Smith also contributed to the article on bridges in the 14th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He was knighted in 1969 and was an active member of many associations of civil engineers; he served as president (1967–68) of the Institution of Civil Engineers and acted as a consultant (1969–78) to W.V. Zinn and Associates after his formal retirement.