George Buchanan (engineer, born 1790)

George Buchanan FRSE FRSSA (c. 1790, Montrose – 30 October 1852) was a Scottish civil engineer and land surveyor who worked primarily on bridges and harbours.

In 1822, on the invitation of the directors of the School of Arts, he delivered a course of lectures on mechanical philosophy in the Freemasons' Hall, remarkable for the original and striking experiments.

This report attracted the attention and gained the marked commendation of Lord-justice-clerk Charles Hope, Lord Granton, then solicitor-general, who afterwards, as long as he remained at the bar, always gave the advice in any case involving scientific evidence to 'secure Buchanan.'

Subsequently, in all the important salmon-fishing questions which arose, and which embraced nearly every estuary in Scotland, Buchanan's services were enlisted, the point be generally to determine where the river ended and the sea began.

In 1848, he began the work of erecting the tall chimney, nearly 400 feet (120 m) in height, of the Edinburgh Gasworks, and carried cut a series of experiments to assure its stability.

He communicated a series of papers in 1851 to the Edinburgh Courant newspaper on pendulum experiments relating to the Earth's rotation, and was a regular contributor to the 'Transactions of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts.'