Thursday, March 8, 2007

Saluting Engineers II


There you go Siv, another London monument to an engineer. This one is Joseph Bazalgette, the man who probably did the most to improve the level of health in London - he built the first effective sewage system in London.

Engineering is a mystery to me.. I was dreadful at physics and maths (calculus and beyond). Now to find the memorial to the unknown bean counter or the mediocre biochemist....

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, I really really hated biochemistry at med school - so I salute thee, oh Master of Being Able to Learn that Dreadful Science ;)

Anonymous said...

PS - besides, I'm not only a failed med student (nah, I gave up, that's not really failing... but almost), I am an electrical engineer too, and they are rarely saluted this way.

I want my own statue. Bohooo. You know that first day when the Lord said "let there be light" - well, what happened? The electrical engineers were done and ready, he GOT his light. "The oldest profession in the world", you know :)

Cecilia said...

Well, I took the long way through thinking I wanted to be an engineer (albeit a chemistry one) and ending up as a biochemist! Well, at least that's what my degrees are in but I feel much more comfortable saying I'm a neuroscientist. Got any neuroscientist statues?

Steve Bates said...

Cool. Sewer systems do indeed contribute to public health in ways typically unnoticed by the public... if everything is working right. We live on a bayou (a medium-sized stream), about a mile from a sewage treatment plant, and only on rare occasions are we aware of the fact, a testament to the high quality of engineering of the plant itself. Of course, we still sometimes call our place "Sewer-Side by the Bayou..."

jams o donnell said...

I never even applied to Med school. I eventually plumped for a degree in Physiology and Biochemistry. Personally I preferred the physiology side, particularly Neurophys and Endocrinology... On the other hand I was not cut out to be a scientist so I ended up drifting into the civil service.

I did try and rekindle my academic interest in science by doing an MSC part time (Microbiology). aLL it did was finally impress on me that I am not cut out to be a scientist!

jams o donnell said...

Ach Cecilia in the perfect world there would be titanic statues to the likes of Katz, Hodgkin and Huxley!

I suppose the difference is that you can drive or take a train over Brunel's legacy, you can't do the same for, say, Ulf von Euler!