David Blockley

David Blockley is an Emeritus Professor of Engineering at the University of Bristol, UK. He was born in Derbyshire, England, in 1941. He graduated from the University of Sheffield in 1964 and gained his PhD there in 1967. For 2 years, he was a Development Engineer with the British Constructional Steelwork Association in London working on design development. In 1969, he became a Lecturer in Civil Engineering at the University of Bristol, was promoted to a readership in 1982 and a personal Chair in 1989. In the same year, he was appointed Head of the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Bristol until 1994 when he was elected Dean of Engineering at the University of Bristol from 1994 to 1998. He was reappointed as the Head of Civil Engineering in 2002 until his retirement in 2006. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, of the Institution of Civil Engineers, of the Institution of Structural Engineers and of the Royal Society of Arts. He was the President of the Institution of Structural Engineers during 2001–2002. He is a Corresponding Member of the Argentinean Academy of Science and of Engineering. He was a Non-Executive Director of Bristol Water plc from 1998 to 2007. He is the author of over 180 papers and seven books, and has won several technical awards for his work, including The Telford Gold Medal of the Institution of Civil Engineers. His first four books were technical and written for other engineers, but his most recent five books have been written for the general reader.