History of the Section

The Geotechnics Section, formerly known as the Soil Mechanics Section was formed by Professor A. W. Skempton in 1946. A history of the section, including a discussion on the early years is given on pages 153-162 of 100 Years of Civil Engineering at South Kensington by Joyce Brown.

The Skempton and Bishop archives give overviews of the contributions of both Professors Skempton and Bishop to geotechnical engineering, and include searchable databases of their work

The August 2015 Bulletin of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering includes an article which gives an overview of our current research. You can access the research highlight article here.

A one-year, postgraduate specialist degree in soil mechanics has been offered by the section since 1950, during which time  hundreds of students from all over the world have participated in this MSc. These courses remain popular. Many of our alumni return each year to attend our annual pre-Rankine lecture seminars.  The Soil Mechanics section expanded and was renamed as Geotechnics in 1996 when Engineering Geology was incorporated, alongside the associated MSc programme.  The application of Geology to Civil Engineering has been taught at Imperial College since 1910 when Dr Herbert Lapworth provided a regular course of lectures entitled "Engineering Geology".  In 1964, under the guidance of the then Dr John Knill , the Masters course in Engineering Geology was initiated.  All graduates automatically became members of Herbert Lapworth Club (alumni club).