Monty Finniston - Biography

Sir Harold Montague "Monty" Finniston (1912–1991) was a British industrialist born in Glasgow, Scotland.

Monty Finniston read metallurgical chemistry at Glasgow University, where he gained his PhD and then lectured in metallurgy. He spent the years of the Second World War in the Royal Naval Scientific Service. After the war he worked in Canada, and then was appointed Chief Metallurgist at the Atomic Energy Authority, Harwell. The years 1948-58 which he spent there were a time of rapid development of nuclear power. Finniston initiated and oversaw a wide-ranging research programme into the many metallurgical problems associated with nuclear reactor design, involving uranium fuel elements, their light alloy cladding, and reactor containment vessels. In 1958 moved to north-east England to become Director of the Nuclear Research Centre newly founded by the Newcastle electrical engineering firm C. A. Parsons. In the early 1960s, when enthusiasm for atomic power waned, he persuaded Parsons' board to convert the Centre into International Research and Development Ltd. (IRD), a wide-ranging contract engineering research company.

He was Vice-President of the Royal Society, 1971-2. He became chairman of British Steel in 1973, and was knighted in the same year.

In 1977 the government, in response to complaints from industry about a shortage of qualified engineers, invited Finniston to set up a committee of enquiry into British engineering. In 1979 the committee delivered the "Finniston Report", which addressed the concerns that engineering was of relatively low status in the UK. One of the main recommendations was that universities should offer engineering degrees (BEng and MEng) rather than just science degrees (BSc). This report also led to the establishment of the Engineering Council in 1982, and WISE (Women into Science and Engineering) in 1984.

In 1981 he founded the Prison Reform Trust (PRT).

Later he became Chancellor of Stirling University.

External sources

• Video interview
• N.J. Petch, FRS, "Sir Harold Montague Finniston", Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Vol. 38 (Nov., 1992), pp. 132-144.