Andrew Bryan (engineer)

Sir Andrew Meikle Bryan (1 March 1893 – 26 June 1988) was a Scottish mining engineer and academic.

Life

Andrew Bryan was born on 1 March 1893, the son of John Bryan, of Hamilton, Lanarkshire, and was educated at Greenfields School and at the former Hamilton Academy and is listed as a notable former pupil of the school in the Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association Magazine, February 1950, feature on Hamilton Academy in the article series 'Famous Scottish Schools'.

Career

After school, Bryan began work in a local colliery and studied at evening classes. In 1912 he won a scholarship to the University of Glasgow and following an interruption for service in World War I he graduated with a BSc Mining in 1919, subsequently being awarded a DSc and in 1952 an Honorary LLD, both also from Glasgow. In 1919 he also gained his First Class Certificate of Competence in mine management.

From 1920 to 1932 he was a Junior and later Senior Inspector of Mines in the Mines Inspectorate Northern Division working in the Newcastle and Durham areas of the Division., In 1932 Bryan was appointed to the James S. Dixon Chair of Mining, in the University of Glasgow and the Royal Technical College (renamed in 1956 the Royal College of Science and Technology and in 1964 becoming the University of Strathclyde). This Chair had been endowed in 1907 by another former pupil of Hamilton Academy, James Stedman Dixon. Andrew Bryan was to hold this professorship until 1940, in which year he was appointed General Manager of the Shotts Iron Co. Ltd. in Lanarkshire, Scotland (and despite its name this was now primarily a coal mining company), becoming a Director in 1942 and the company's Managing Director in 1944.