John Scott Russell FRSE FRS FRSA was a Scottish civil engineer, naval architect and shipbuilder who built Great Eastern in collaboration with Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
John Scott Russell, the British civil engineer best known for research in ship design. He designed the first seagoing battleship built entirely of iron.
A graduate of the University of Glasgow (at age 16), Russell became professor of natural philosophy in 1832 at the University of Edinburgh, where he first began his research into the nature of water waves and their effects on hulls. His subsequent employment at Scottish shipbuilding works produced new hull designs based on his research. Moving to London (1844), he became a shipbuilder on the Thames, designing or co-designing many ships, including the Great Eastern (1856) and HMS Warrior (1860), the world’s first wholly ironclad battleship. He wrote several books, including On the Nature, Properties, and Applications of Steam, and on Steam Navigation (1841) and The Modern System of Naval Architecture.
He was the first to record an observation of a soliton, while conducting experiments to determine the most efficient design for canal boats. In Aug 1834, he observed what he called the “Wave of Translation,” a solitary wave formed in the narrow channel of a canal which continues ahead after a canal boat stops. He also made the first experimental observation of the “Doppler shift” of sound frequency as a train passes (1848).