William Robertson Copland
British civil engineer
Sir William Robertson Copland MICE LLD (1838–1907) was a 19th-century British civil engineer, specialising in drainage and water supply.
Life
He was born in Stirling in central Scotland in 1838, the son of John Copland a merchant tailor who was later Chairman of Glasgow Technical College.
He was educated at Stirling High School then studied Engineering at Glasgow University. He was then apprenticed to David Smith from 1850 to 1856. He then joined the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway Company before becoming Burgh engineer to Paisley.
Copland was involved in the renovation of Dunoon Pier in the second half of the 19th century.
In later life he was heavily involved in the Glasgow Technical College and its expansion. He became Chairman of the Board of Governors in 1897.
He had premises with his firm Copland & Foulis at 146 West Regent Street. He was knighted by King Edward VII in 1906 and received an honorary doctorate (LLD) from Glasgow University in 1907.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “William Robertson Copland” as british civil engineer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as british civil engineer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 3, 2021. The linked authority identifier is Q50762619. The first chronological checks are 1838, 1907, 1850 and 1856.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Robertson Copland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.