Peter John Lawrenson (12 March 1933 – 27 October 2017)[3] was an Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Leeds who pioneered and championed the development of switched reluctance drive technology.
He also made significant contributions to the analysis and computation of magnetic fields and electrical machines in general, writing several notable text books along with colleagues Kenneth Binns,[4] Martyn Harris and J. Michael Stephenson [5] and latterly with C.W.
[7][8] In 1961 Lawrenson was appointed a Lecturer in Electrical Engineering at the University of Leeds, from where his publications show growing interest in reluctance machines - initially AC-fed synchronous reluctance motors [9][10][11][12][13][14] and later doubly-salient synchronous machines such as stepper motors (resulting in numerous further publications throughout the 1970s, often co-authored with research students and colleagues including Austin Hughes, Michael Stephenson, Paul Acarnley, Philip Blenkinsop, Norman Fulton and Jasmin Corda, to name but some of his co-workers).
Nidec Drive Systems continues to supply SR motors and inverters, but presently only for a minority of customer-specific industrial and off-road vehicle applications.
[1] Lawrenson won the IEEE Edison Medal in 2005 For outstanding contributions to the field of electrical machines, most notably the development and commercialization of switched reluctance drives.