John Wolfe Barry

Sir John Wolfe Barry (1836 to 1918) was an English civil engineer, the youngest son of the architect Sir Charles Barry, who designed the Houses of Parliament. He trained under Sir John Hawkshaw, began his own practice in 1867 and did much of his early work for the railways, including bridges across the Thames such as Cannon Street and Blackfriars Railway Bridges. His name is tied above all to Tower Bridge in London: after the architect Horace Jones proposed a low-level bascule bridge and died in 1885, Wolfe Barry took control of the engineering. His other work included Barry Docks near Cardiff, the Kew Railway Bridge and the enlargement of Greenland Dock. He was President of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1896, was knighted in 1897, and pressed the Institution to form the committee on iron and steel sections that led to the British Standards Institution. He added Wolfe to his surname in 1898, chaired Cable and Wireless from 1900 to 1917, and died in January 1918.