Calendar: 1972-1973 Page 403

Annual Report of the Delegacy xxi Engineering in 1946 During this long period considerable changes have taken place in the College and we are indebted to Professor Ross for the sound and wise guidance he has given to us over wide range of matters during his period of office He has served on the Planning Committee the Finance Committee the Delegacy and numerous other College committees and his contributions to their deliberations have never been self-interested but always with the needs of the whole College foremost in mind He has also served on University Com- mittees and as Member of Council of the Institution of Civil Engineers He took over the Department of Civil Engineering after the return of the College from Bristol The staff" were barely sufficient numerically to cope with the large influx of able ex-Service men and like the others he taught without complaint variety of subjects and shared an office with his most junior lecturer The Department developed gradually under his leadership and when the quadrangle laboratories were opened in 1950 the first landmark was passed Professor Ross is known as one of the pioneers on the subject of 'creep' in concrete an interest he has sustained over period of approaching forty years during which he has progressed from the lone voice in the wilderness to the authority of international repute His reputation is particularly high in the There has been an ex- plosion of interest in the field in the last ten years and his work including even his earliest pre-war papers are read and quoted exten- sively He worked mostly in difficult conditions with restricted resources and showed genius for identifying the vital issue and mounting the simple decisive experiment Professor Ross always related his ideas and findings to engineering practice and was often consulted by professional engineers on problems concerning prestressed concrete structures This reached culmination in the 1960s when his unique knowledge particularly on the creep and moisture movement in heated concrete was in great demand in the analysis and design of prestressed concrete pressure vessels for nuclear power stations His knowledge and scholarship extends over the whole field of concrete properties and structures this is reflected in the long period over 20 years that he has been on the Editorial Board of the Magazine of Concrete Research of which he is now Chairman and in the many other advisory posts that he has held His prime interest has been in his students past and present and there must be hundreds scattered throughout the world who are grateful to