Sir Andrew Noble, 1st Baronet KCB FRS (13 September 1831 – 22 October 1915) was a Scottish physicist noted for his work on ballistics and gunnery.

[1] In 1860 he joined Armstrong's armaments works in Elswick, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, first as joint manager and, from 1861, as a partner, where he continued research into artillery, in particular inventing ways of measuring breech pressures.

In 1862 he invented the Electro-Mechanical Chronoscope to measure small time intervals between triggers inserted into a gun to determine the acceleration of projectiles as they travelled down the barrel, allowing him to assess the performance of different powders.

These developments required the re-design of both the guns and their mountings, manufactured by Armstrongs, which gave them a competitive advantage, ultimately helping the company expand into shipbuilding, locomotives, tanks and aircraft to become one of the world's largest armament firms by 1914.

With Sir William Armstrong's effective retirement from active control in about 1890, Noble's primary role changed from scientist to businessman, formally becoming chairman in 1900, and he oversaw much of this growth of the company.

Following the near-collapse of Armstrongs in 1927 Wretham was demolished, and Saxton commissioned designs for a topiary garden representing the plan of a huge house for the site from Sir Edwin Lutyens.