Details

Papers of Professor G H Rawcliffe

UK0108 NAEST 071

1912-1980

73 items

English.

Gordon Hindle Rawcliffe was born in Sheffield on 2 June 1910, but spent much of his early life in Gloucester, which he considered to be his native town. His father was a clergyman and Gordon, the eldest of three children, acquired at an early age a love of sacred music and extensive knowledge of the Bible. Future interests were to include education, language and law. Early education at St Edmund's School, Canterbury (1924-1929) was followed by entry to Keble College, Oxford, from which Gordon graduated with a first class honours degree in engineering science. In 1932 he joined Metropolitan-Vickers (MetroVick) where he designed electrical machinery. It was in order to acquire a greater understanding of the basic principles underlying the design and operation of electrical machines that in 1938 Rawcliffe accepted the post of lecturer at the University of Liverpool. Work here was to play an important part in laying the foundations for future research. Within a year Rawcliffe had produced his first scientific paper 'The Limits of Theory in Electrical Machine Design' which he read to the Mersey and North Wales Students' Section of the IEE and for which he won a student premium. Three years later in 1941, Rawcliffe became Head of the Electrical Engineering Department, Robert Gordon's College, Aberdeen and Lecturer in Charge of Electrical Engineering in the University of Aberdeen. He was awarded the degree of DSc by the University in 1944 and in the same year was appointed Professor of Electrical Engineering at Bristol University.The reputation of Rawcliffe's Department was enhanced by the colleagues he recruited around him. William Fong for example, an engineer trained at Faraday House and MetroVick was appointed in 1957 and A R W Broadway followed a year later. Rawcliffe worked closely with these men until his death. Rawcliffe was Dean of the Faculty of Engineering 'de facto' 1948 and 'de jure' 1949-1951. He served a second term as Dean 1963-66 and twice declined the office of Pro Vice Chancellor. He was also a Governor of the Bristol College of Science and Technology, later to become the University of Bath. Rawlciffe was passionately interested in electrical machines and the theory which lay behind them. He took the then unpopular view that there were still significant advances to be made in electrical machinery in the 1940s. After 1954 he began a systematic reconsideration of polyphase winding, the basis for all alternating current machinery. In 1955 and 1956 two papers were published in the IEE Proceedings concerned with the dual possibilities of frequency-changing and pole-changing. The result of this research was the discovery in 1957 of a technique for making an induction motor run at more than one speed. Rawcliffe's name became synonymous with 'pole amplitude modulation' or PAM the name coined for this technique. The discovery of the PAM technique, described by Rawcliffe as a new philiosphy of windings, led to a series of research papers, patents, licensing agreements and various consultancies to advise on application problems. Rawcliffe made numerous visits to North America, Eastern Europe, the Far East and Australasia and established a particularly important link with the Westinghouse Corporation in the USA. Rawcliffe's work on speed changing induction motors and PAM received due recgnition. Rawcliffe served on many IEE committees, was elected Chairman of the Western Centre 1956-1957, delivered the Hunter Memorial Lecture in 1970 and in 1972 was elected Vice-President. In the same year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1978 the IEE awarded Rawcliffe an Honorary Fellowship and he was given the S G Brown Medal by the Royal Society. Loughborough University awarded an Hon D Tech in 1974 and the Unviersity of Bath an Hon DSc in 1976. Rawlciffe was elected to a Fellowship of Engineering in 1976. He received many invitations to serve on the SRC and to advise Goverment bodies. Rawcliffe retired from Bristol University in 1975 and continued to work from home. He suffered from ill health all his life and it was a severe asthma attack, inducing a heart attack, which caused his death at his home in Clifton on 3 September 1979. Rawcliffe married in 1940 Stella Mary Morgan and had two daughters in 1943 and 1947. In 1952 he married Sheila Mary Wicks, a linguist and Oxford graduate, and had two daughters in 1955 and 1958.

Rawcliffe Gordon Hindle Professor, Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company Ltd

Research, Modulation, Pole amplitude modulation, AC theory

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