Alan Wilfred Bishop (27 May 1920 – 30 June 1988) was a British

geotechnical engineer Geotechnical engineering is the branch of civil engineering concerned with the engineering behavior of earth materials. It uses the principles of soil mechanics and rock mechanics for the solution of its respective engineering problems. It al ...

and academic, working at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

. He was known for the

Bishop's method Slope stability analysis is a static or dynamic, analytical or empirical method to evaluate the stability of earth and rock-fill dams, embankments, excavated slopes, and natural slopes in soil and rock. Slope stability refers to the condition of i ...

of analysing soil slopes. After his graduation from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Bishop worked under

Alec Skempton Sir Alec Westley Skempton (4 June 1914 – 9 August 2001) was an English civil engineer internationally recognised, along with Karl Terzaghi, as one of the founding fathers of the engineering discipline of soil mechanics. He established the soi ...

and obtained his PhD in 1952 with his thesis title being: ''The stability of earth dams''. He worked extensively in the field of experimental

Soil mechanics Soil mechanics is a branch of soil physics and applied mechanics that describes the behavior of soils. It differs from fluid mechanics and solid mechanics in the sense that soils consist of a heterogeneous mixture of fluids (usually air and wat ...

and developed apparati for soil testing, such as the triaxial test and the ring shear. His contribution to the science was widely acknowledged and he was invited in 1966 to deliver the 6th

Rankine Lecture The Rankine lecture is an annual lecture organised by the British Geotechnical Association named after William John Macquorn Rankine, an early contributor to the theory of soil mechanics. This should not be confused with the biennial BGA Géotec ...

of the

British Geotechnical Association The British Geotechnical Association is a learned 'Associated Society' of the Institution of Civil Engineers,ICE Associated Societies newsletter, Spring/Summer 2011 (Accessed: 19 July 2013) based in London, England, and a registered UK charity (N ...

titled: ''The strength of soils as engineering materials''.Bishop A. W. (1966), ''The strength of soils as engineering materials''. Rankine Lecture, Geotechnique, 16 (2), 91–130 Nowadays, a part of the Soil Mechanics Laboratories at Imperial College is named after him in recognition of his long-time work at the College.

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* Obituar

The Skempton and Bishop Archives
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bishop, Alan W. 1920 births 1988 deaths Academics of Imperial College London Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Geotechnical engineers Alumni of Imperial College London Alumni of Emmanuel College, Cambridge English civil engineers

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