Bernard Crossland

Sir Bernard Crossland (20 October 1923 – 17 January 2011) was a British professor of engineering with a career spanning some seven decades.

Upon leaving Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys in 1940 he gained employment as an engineering apprentice with Rolls-Royce, gaining his education through part-time study culminating in the award of a PhD from the University of Bristol in 1953.

After retirement, Sir Bernard became involved in the investigation of several accidents, the most noteworthy of which was the King's Cross fire where he headed up the scientific committee which established the cause of the fire and made recommendations to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again.

In his later years, Sir Bernard served as an Emeritus Professor of Chemical Engineering at Queen's University of Belfast, where a building, housing the Computer Science department, was named after him until March 2017.

[4] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1979, appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1980 and knighted in 1990.