Edmund Hambly

Who was Edmund Hambly?

Dr Edmund Cadbury Hambly was a British structural engineer.

Edmund Hambly was born in Seer Green, near Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire in 1942. He went to Eton College prior to studying the engineering tripos at Cambridge University. He excelled there gaining a first class honours degree and claiming the prize in structural engineering. Staying at Cambridge he completed his doctorate following work on soil deformation models. It was here that he met and married Elizabeth Gorham with whom he would have three daughters and a son.

Hambly left academia to spend five years working with Ove Arup and Partners in the design of structures and Gifford and Partners in bridge building. He devised new models and work methods for the approximation of structural behaviour which he published in 1976 in his first book, Bridge Deck Behaviour. In 1974 he set up his own consultancy and worked from his home in Hertfordshire, writing more than 40 technical papers to supplement his income. One of his first contracts was to investigate the design of bridge foundations for the Building Research Establishment, publishing some of his findings in Bridge Foundations and Substructures in 1979.