Sir Alan Walter Rudge CBE, FREng, FRS (born 17 October 1937 London) is a British

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

. He was Chairman of the ERA Foundation from its formation until December 2012, after which he was appointed as the Foundation's President. In 2012 he also stepped down as Chairman of the Board of Management of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, a position he had held for eleven years; he had succeeded

Sir Denis Rooke Sir Denis Eric Rooke (2 April 1924 – 2 September 2008) was an English industrialist and engineer. Early life Denis Eric Rooke was born in New Cross, London, the younger son of Frederick George Rooke, a printer and travelling salesman, and h ...

and was himself succeeded by Bernard Taylor.

Life

He earned a BSc from the

London Polytechnic , mottoeng = The Lord is our Strength , type = Public , established = 1838: Royal Polytechnic Institution 1891: Polytechnic-Regent Street 1970: Polytechnic of Central London 1992: University of Westminster , endowment = £5.1 million ...

in 1964 and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Birmingham in 1968. He was head of operations at

British Telecommunications BT Group plc (trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-line, broa ...

. He was Chairman of the

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is a British Research Council that provides government funding for grants to undertake research and postgraduate degrees in engineering and the physical sciences, mainly to universi ...

. He is a past President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and was Chairman of the Engineering Council. He was appointed a Fellow of the

Royal Academy of Engineering The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering. The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senior ...

in 1984. He was until July 2014 Deputy Chairman and Senior Independent Director on the board of

Experian plc Experian is an American–Irish multinational data analytics and consumer credit reporting company. Experian collects and aggregates information on over 1 billion people and businesses including 235 million individual U.S. consumers and more t ...

. In 1994 he was invited to deliver the MacMillan Memorial Lecture to the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland. He chose the subject "Multimedia and the Information Superhighway". In 1995, he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science) by the University of Bath. In the New Year Honours list for 2000 he was appointed Knight Bachelor for services to Engineering Research and to Industry.

Climate change

He is a member of the academic advisory council of the

Global Warming Policy Foundation The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is a charitable organization in the United Kingdom whose stated aims are to challenge what it calls "extremely damaging and harmful policies" envisaged by governments to mitigate anthropogenic global ...

, a

climate change denial Climate change denial, or global warming denial, is denial, dismissal, or doubt that contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change, including the extent to which it is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, or th ...

think tank chaired by Nigel Lawson. In 2010 he organized a petition of 43 denialists (about 3% of the membership) challenging the Royal Society's "unnecessarily alarmist position" on climate change. He told '' The Times'' that "there is a lot of science to be done before we can be certain about climate change and before we impose upon ourselves the huge economic burden of cutting emissions." The revised guidance was published in September 2010 and its lead conclusion was "There is strong evidence that changes in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activity are the dominant cause of the global warming that has taken place over the last half century".

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rudge, Alan 1937 births Alumni of the University of Westminster Alumni of the University of Birmingham British Telecom people Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellows of the Royal Society Knights Bachelor Living people Scientists from London