John Fleetwood Baker

As a result of Baker’s work, the British Standard 449 was modified by the insertion of a clause to permit plastic design in 1948. The Welding Institute at Abington became a showcase for examples in plastic design of buildings. Three separate examples also exist at the Engineering lab in Cambridge.

	Pictures of the Baker Building, CUED (left) and the Welding Institute (above).

Plastic theory, as developed by Baker and his team became a central part of the undergraduate course at Cambridge in the late 1960s. It can be applied to any material that is used for building, from a medieval cathedral to a skyscraper. Use of this theory is now saving the taxpayer millions of pounds in its application for the evaluation of the safety of road bridges.