Sir, – I am astonished at John Kelly’s assertion that academic engineers are “different creatures from scientists” (Opinion, October 2nd), and that we are “involved in putting things together and making them work”, in notional contrast to scientists’ “study of the universe and how it works”.
The hallmark of both the professional and the academic engineer is that they understand securely the mathematical and physical principles that underpin technology. With this understanding, our solutions and designs can aspire to the optimal, the creative, and occasionally the revolutionary.
This is the spirit we engender in our students, at both the undergraduate and the research level. Engineering faculties of merit engage in basic scientific research precisely because engineering is always intent on rendering current solutions obsolete. If we, as a people, want to participate in the unstoppable global development of engineering science, and the inventions that flow from it, then we must fund this basic research, and allow our engineering students to witness this spirit of basic enquiry, in both the classroom and the research lab.
The idea that there are “high walls separating” scientists and engineers – to use Dr Kelly’s lamentable phrase – is an impoverishing one. Such walls would corral engineering into a ghetto of mediocrity, gaining us merely a D in R+D. If our funding agencies are intent on circumscribing our field in this way, then talent will fly. After all, the essence of engineering is to reach beyond boundaries. – Yours, etc,