Warren, William Henry (WH)

Warren arrived in Australia in 1882. His birthplace was Bristol in England where he commenced employment as an engineer circa 1867 with the London and North Western Railway. In 1872, he took up studies at the Royal College of Science Dublin where his awards included a Royal Exhibition, Queens medal in Mathematics, first class honours and first prize for studies in the technology of iron and steel, and the Whitworth Scholarship which he held for the years 1873 to 1876; in 1874, he entered Owens College Manchester. In 1875, he was employed at E J Bellhouse & Co Manchester as chief draughtsman; he supervised the construction of several bridges and iron houses for South America and India. In 1877, he was appointed chief assistant to Messrs Maynall and Littlewoods where he designed bridges, market buildings, sewage and drainage works, the Bradford Road gasworks and other works for the corporation of Manchester. In 1881, he was engaged by the London and North Western Railway to design some twenty bridges (road and railway) and other works for extensions to Victoria Station.

In the year of his arrival in New South Wales, 1882, Warren was employed by the Government Public Works Department and Sydney Technical College. In 1883 the University appointed him to a lectureship in engineering within the Physics Department. In 1884, his submission to the University Senate for a professorship was approved. From 1890 until his retirement in 1925, he held the Challis Chair of Engineering.

During his years with the University, Warren carried out extensive systematic tests on materials used in construction, especially timber from hardwood trees felled in NSW forests. In 1918, the University Senate approved Warren scting as Chairman of a special committee to undertake the investigation of Australian timbers for the Australian Government Department of Defence. Warren's treatise on construction materials was published in 3 editions. He was commissioner on the 1892 Royal Commission of Inquiry on Baldwin locomotives, chairman of the NSW Legislative Assembly's Board of Inquiry into the George and Harris Street electric tramway (1899), reported on irrigation in South India for the British Government in Madras (1910) and on the explosion on the ship Cumberland for the Australian Government (1917).

Warren was elected to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1877. In 1913, Glasgow University awarded him an honorary degree of doctor of letters. He was a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and of the International Society for Testing Materials of Construction. The Institution of Engineers Australia was established in 1919 with Warren as President.

The papers in this collection remained in the Peter Nicol Russell School of Engineering until the late 1950s when they were transfered to the University Archives together with records documenting Warren's administration in the Faculty of Engineering. Warren had died 9 days after the date of his formal retirement from the University.

The following references were used in writing this administrative history: University Archives P149,
Journal of the Royal Society of NSW vol LX (1926) pages 9-11,
The Australian Technical Journal vol 1, no 11, (1897) pp 325-332,
Senate Minutes 1882 (Archives G1/1/6 paragraph 204), 1884 (G1/1/7 pp 50, 59), September 1918 (G1/1/15 pp 99-100), 1925 (G1/1/18 pp 53, 71), Faculty of Engineering Minutes 8 July 1920 and 20 June 1924.