I became aware that politicians and Downing Street do not comprehend the great worth to the nation of Engineers several years ago. To see the prime minister, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband unveiling the £1 million prize for The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering is sheer hypocrisy based upon first-hand experience on the part of our politicians. I say this because it is a fact that a British citizen and a little old white haired great-grandfather figure now deceased and hardly known in the United Kingdom, even though he did most of his revolutionary engineering work there, was not seen fit to be knighted by our politicians in 2000. To put this person into perspective, this solitary engineer literally revolutionised engineering sciences throughout the world and where his great work has now entered into most of the sciences, saving countless lives in the process every day. His name was the late Professor Dr (mult.) John Argyris, the modern inventor of the Finite Element Method and where Professor Ray Clough, regarded as the most eminent structural engineer in the USA stated this in his 1960 publication and where he first coined the phrase Finite Element Method. Indeed Clough stated in his ground breaking publication that it was the Argyris Method’, ceding the FEM to Argyris in perpetuity. But to put Argyris into perspective the following world changing events and engineering feats amongst a few would not have happened including the 1969 moon landing, the determination that the ‘shuttle’ would be safe upon re-entry and where planes, cars, dams, trains and buildings etc would not be as safe as they are today. Indeed Argyris’s work has most probably saved tens of millions of lives indirectly over the last 50 years through his unparalleled research work. But the greatest reason why Argyris should have been knighted by our politicians is because in 1943 after the British airlifted him from Germany via Lisbon, he single-handily determined at the Royal Aeronautical Society (working then for the British Government) that our aircraft design data sheets had up to 80% faults in their structural design. In this respect the Establishment (non-engineers who thought that Argyris was trying to destroy them) did not believe him and it was only because our aircraft industry at the time said that Argyris was right that they were eventually overturned. One has therefore to put this ‘single’ enormous engineering design feat into perspective also. How many allied lives were saved by our planes being far safer considering that tens, if not hundreds of thousands of allied paratroopers alone landed safely on mainland Europe before and after D-Day it has to be asked? Indeed if we had continued to send highly defective aircraft to liberate Europe, how many would have been killed by faulty engineering than Nazi bullets it has to be asked? But again, in 2000 the political Establishment refused to Knight him even though he had since the end of WW2 developed the greatest design invention in the history of global engineering. Therefore not until politicians really understand the worth of engineers what they say and do will be just mere words and a complete political charade. Argyris did of course receive the highest national engineering awards from 17 nations, so what did they see that our politicians did not? Dr David Hill World Innovation Foundation

- dr david hill, 25/11/2011