Major Patrick Hunter Gordon CBE MC

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

(6 December 1916-28 March 1978) was a Scottish soldier and electrical engineer. He was Managing Director of both AI Welders and Cable Belt.

Life

He was born on 6 December 1916 in

Inverness Inverness (; from the gd, Inbhir Nis , meaning "Mouth of the River Ness"; sco, Innerness) is a city in the Scottish Highlands. It is the administrative centre for The Highland Council and is regarded as the capital of the Highlands. Histori ...

, the son of Samuel Gordon Hunter (b.1877) and his wife, Clare Agnes Johnston from

County Down County Down () is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. It covers an area of and has a population of 531,665. It borders County Antrim to the ...

. He was educated at

Cargilfield Preparatory School Cargilfield Preparatory School is a private co-educational prep school in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was founded in 1873. It is a day and boarding school for boys and girls aged 3–13 and caters for approximately 300 pupils. It prepares pupils mai ...

in Edinburgh then Oundle School in Northamptonshire then went to Cambridge University where he graduated MA. He next undertook military training at the

Royal Military Academy Sandhurst The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS or RMA Sandhurst), commonly known simply as Sandhurst, is one of several military academies of the United Kingdom and is the British Army's initial officer training centre. It is located in the town of ...

joining the

Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is heade ...

in 1936. In the Second World War he was located at Fort Hahenberg and Brillon near Lille on the

Maginot Line The Maginot Line (french: Ligne Maginot, ), named after the French Minister of War André Maginot, is a line of concrete fortifications, obstacles and weapon installations built by France in the 1930s to deter invasion by Germany and force the ...

in March 1940. In June 1948 he became an instructor at

Camberley Staff College Staff College, Camberley, Surrey, was a staff college for the British Army and the presidency armies of British India (later merged to form the Indian Army). It had its origins in the Royal Military College, High Wycombe, founded in 1799, which i ...

. He died in a car accident on 28 March 1978 and was buried at Tomnahurich in

Family

In 1940 he married Valerie de Ferranti (granddaughter of Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti founder of Ferranti).

Valerie Hunter Gordon Valerie Hunter Gordon (née Valerie Ziani de Ferranti; 7 December 1921 – 16 October 2016) was the British inventor of PADDI, a sustainable nappy system considered to be the world's first disposable nappy, and Nikini, an early sanitary tow ...

came to fame in 1947 as the inventor of one of the world's first disposable nappies, the PADDI.Daily Record (newspaper) 15 May 2015

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gordon, Patrick Hunter 1916 births 1978 deaths Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Recipients of the Military Cross Military personnel from Inverness Royal Engineers officers Scottish electrical engineers Alumni of the University of Cambridge People educated at Oundle School Scottish chief executives Road incident deaths in Scotland 20th-century Scottish businesspeople