John Samuel Forrest FRS[1] (20 August 1907 – 11 November 1992) was a Scottish-born physicist, writer and Professor Emeritus, University of Strathclyde.
He also won the Thomson Prize in Astronomy and graduated in 1930 with a double degree, BSc in pure science, with a second class honours in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy.
His first published paper on the Grid was submitted to the Institution of Electrical Engineers in June 1931, in which month he also attended the Conference Internationale des Grands Reseau Electrique at Paris, with Thomas Allibone.
Rising to Directorship of the new Central Electricity Research Laboratory with some 800 staff, in 1960 Forrest was invited to give the Hunter Memorial Lecture and was nominated Chairman of the Supply Section (1961–62) of the IEE, and in 1963 he gave the third John Logie Baird Memorial Lecture in the Royal College of Science and Technology and was elected President, Section A of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Aberdeen.
From November 1963 through to April 1964, Forrest gave a series of thirteen deliveries of the Faraday Lectures, plus repeats for sixth form school pupils, to a total audience of some 35,000.
In 1979 John Forrest was elected a Foreign Associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences and in 1990 was named a Professor Emeritus at the University of Strathclyde.