1945

First Chair in Electrical Engineering

On 28 April 1945 the Regent House announced the election as Professor of Electrical Engineering of Eric Balliol Moullin, Sc.D., of King's and Downing Colleges, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford and Donald Pollock Reader in Engineering Science in the University of Oxford.

Eric Moullin came of an ancient Guernsey family which had seigneurial rights in the island. He was born on 10 August 1893, and being a delicate child was educated privately at home. In 1912 he won an open scholarship to Downing College and the Pooley Scholarship awarded by the Draper's Company. After taking second class honours in Part I of the Mathematical Tripos he obtained first class honours in the Mechanical Sciences Tripos in 1916. He was elected to a Senior Research Fellowship in the Manchester School of Technology, but after a year joined the staff of the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. While serving there he won the John Winbolt Prize (only open to Cambridge B.A.s) for an essay on "Some problems of Gaseous Explosions". When the war ended he returned to Cambridge as an assistant lecturer in the Engineering Department under Inglis and worked mainly in Lamb's electrical group. He also acted as Director of Studies to the officers of the Royal Corps of Signals, and in 1929 was made an assistant lecturer in King's College. He was promoted to university lecturer under the 1926 Statutes.*

* Text from "Engineering at Cambridge University 1783-1965", T.J.N. Hilken, CUP 1967