Mohammad Gill December 9, 2004

Tags: science , mentors

href="/tag/India">India and Pakistan. After the cease-fire when the overseas travel was restored, I went back to Nigeria.

I was given the charge of designing and building a small irrigation system for the development of a minor agricultural project (300-400 acres). My Deputy Chief Engineer was a Pakistani, Ch. Muhammad Ashraf, from the West Punjab Irrigation Department and he advised me to design the project irrigation canals (small ditches) using Lacey’s method of design. In India and Pakistan, Lacey’s regime method of designing the sediment stable canals was extremely popular; in the current professional lingo it was called the gospel for designing the alluvial canals. One of the main reasons of its popularity was that it was developed in India. Lacey had worked on irrigation canals in India and he was (probably the first?) Principal of the Rourkee College. I wouldn’t like to bore the readers with the technical details but a few basic facts are unavoidable and relevant for the narration of my story.

I was aware of the existence of the method because our professor, Dr. Mubbashar Hassan, had described it somewhat sketchily when I was a student at Lahore College of Engineering and Technology, but I didn’t have a good insight. Later on, I would discover that many of the irrigation engineers who used the method routinely, also did not have good comprehension of the method. Prompted to use this method, I propelled myself to understand it.

There was a small library consisting of some twenty books in our department (at Sokoto) and one of them was on irrigation engineering written by an Indian author. I borrowed the book and read everything about Lacey’s method. I got all the formulas, which were normally used in the design; however there was no theoretical derivation of them because there was none in existence. They were just fitted to the empirical data, which had been collected from some of the regime canals in India. They were also dimensionally inhomogeneous. In short, they were ugly although they were considered practically useful.

Gradually, I discovered that Lacey’s method was inapplicable to the project soils, which were cohesive and Lacey’s formulas were valid for sandy soils. I designed the project canals using other appropriate formulas and built them. They operated satisfactorily. But Lacey’s method got stuck in my consciousness. I kept brooding on it every now and then.

There was a monograph compiled by a team of the UNDP (United Nations Development Program) or some other UN organization, in the library. It described a ‘bed load formula’ (non-technical readers need not worry about it), which had been developed by Hans Einstein (son of Albert Einstein, who was a civil engineer) from theoretical considerations. It occurred to me that Einstein’s bed load formula could probably be used to see if there was any link between it and Lacey’s empirical formulation. I started fiddling with the bed load formula and was able to convert it into a form, which appeared similar to one of Lacey’s formulas. I thought that was it. Eureka! I had found the link.

I started putting my work in the form of a technical paper. I had never written a technical paper before; in fact I hadn’t seen any technical paper yet. However I was overflowing with self-confidence about the worthiness of my work.

I knew about the Institution of Civil Engineers, London, because one of our lecturers at Lahore College, who was an Associate Member of the Institution, was very proud of it. I had returned to Nigeria from my vacation through London and had visited the Institution. I had made inquiries how to become an associate member but was discouraged when I was informed that my Pakistani basic degree was not recognized and I will have to pass a written examination. I dropped the idea of enlisting for the membership but I thought I could publish a paper in their proceedings. I was not daunted by the snobbishness of the Institution.

Since I knew the address, I wrote a letter indicating my desire to publish my work in their proceedings. I received a prompt reply asking me to submit the abstract first, which I did. I was advised they would consider my paper but before writing it up I should also read the related recently published work. They sent a list of these papers. Most of them were published by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and I was not aware of its existence even. I ordered some ten (or twenty, I don’t remember the exact number) papers from the ASCE. One of them was written by a professor Henderson, of New Zealand. When I opened his paper, my heart jumped into my throat and I was overcome by excitement. The point of departure of Henderson’s paper was the same as that of mine (Einstein’s bed load formula) but I believed I had gone a little farther on analytical development than he. That was my introduction with

Professor Francis Henderson

I sent a letter to Professor Henderson requesting him to review the draft of my paper and he readily accepted. I sent the paper to him and started anxiously waiting for his response. I didn’t hear from him for several weeks. I thought he hadn’t received my letter because the mail system in Nigeria was normally poor and it was the time of the civil war. I wrote another letter to Professor Henderson and he apologized that he had forgotten about my paper in the rush of his normal routine duties. He returned the draft with very encouraging comments advising me to publish the paper in the Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, ASCE.

I submitted the paper to ASCE with acknowledgment of Professor Henderson’s assistance in reviewing the paper. It is very difficult for an unknown author to publish his first paper in a prestigious journal. The paper was rejected after about nine months. I was asked to provide the empirical validation of my work. In Nigeria, I didn’t have any access to the published data, which I could use to validate my work.

In the mean time, I had taken practical steps in securing admission at Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, for my (post) graduate work. Professor Henderson was one of my referees and I was readily admitted. I would later discover that it was Henderson’s name, which proved helpful in my admission. I went over to Imperial College in the summer of 1968. Nearly three years elapsed since I had submitted my paper to ASCE and it was in the purgatory ever since. As soon as I was at Imperial College, I got the appropriate data from the published papers available in the library, analyzed it and produced the empirical verification. The paper was finally published in July 1968.

ASCE sent twenty five free reprints to me and asked me to send copies to prominent researchers in my field so that if any of them wanted to contribute a written discussion for publication, they could do so within the prescribed time limit. In the mean time, I had read quite a bit in the area of sediment transport and knew the addresses of many of the researchers who would likely be interested in my work. I sent the copies to them. One of them was Sir Claude C. Inglis who had founded and was the first director of the Wallingford Research Station. He was living a retired life. He had also founded the Poona Research Station in India. Another was Gerald Lacey (the author of Lacey’s formulas mentioned above). Sir Claude acknowledged the receipt promptly and said he was already preparing a discussion because he knew of my paper even before receiving my letter. He also said that Lacey was also preparing a discussion.

To cut the long story short, my paper was well received at least within the Commonwealth countries although there were quite a few requests for reprints from the U.S. also. I hadn’t met my mentor, Professor Henderson, face to face yet.

It was the summer of 1969 (I believe); one day I had left the college a little earlier than usual. Professor Henderson called my supervisor, Professor J.R.D. Francis, but he was not available because he was on vacation for a couple of weeks. Professor Henderson was in London for his summer vacation and he knew Professor Francis quite well. The call was taken by one of the (two) Readers, Mr. Kenn. Henderson said he would come to the college next day and would like to see Mr. Gill and asked him to make sure that he received his message. Mr. Kenn rushed to my room (the post-graduates room) to deliver the message and didn’t find me. He asked one of my colleagues to convey the message to me. I didn’t get the message that day but next morning, I went to the college as usual and read Mr. Kenn’s note which he had left on my desk. Soon after, he stepped into my office and checked if I had received the word. I said, yes I did.

Henderson came at the appointed time. He sat down in my chair and started giving me pointers about my research work. He was there with me for about half an hour and then he left the college and went away. I was very much pleased with his visit and his personal interest in my work. I exchanged a couple of letters with him after immigrating to the U.S. as well. He was in Australia at that time. He was known worldwide for his research work and his prestigious tome “Open Channel Flow”, which the graduate students all over the world used in their studies.

Sir Claude C. Inglis

When Sir Claude responded to my first letter, he had dropped a subtle hint that I could visit him at his place at a time mutually convenient for us. He was too old to travel. I picked up the hint and scheduled a meeting with him.

I went to his place by train from London. He lived some thirty – forty miles outside London. I was picked up by a middle-aged woman (I forget her name) from the railway station who informed me that she was Sir Claude’s secretary. She worked for him a couple of days every week. When I reached his house, I met Sir Claude who was short in stature and a frail person. He was close to ninety years in age and nearly blind but otherwise he was alert and active.

Whenever the technical journals were delivered to his place, his secretary would read the titles of the papers to him. He would tell her in which papers he was interested. She would then read those papers into a VCR and record them on tape. At his leisure, Sir Claude would play back the tape and listen. He would then absorb the essence of the paper, together with its mathematical equations. If he were interested to write a technical discussion of the paper, he would record it (with the help of his wife, I suppose, who was relatively younger, about seventy years old, and quite active) into the machine. The secretary would play it back, type it, read it to Sir Claude for any corrections if he wanted to make, and send it for publication. The method worked quite smoothly and his discussions were usually very readable and accurate.

He was full of stories also about his work in India, Wallingford, and about his friendly and non-malicious professional rivalry with the idiosyncratic Gerald Lacey. He was very impressed of Lacey’s writing skills. He personally knew (Brigadier) Ralph Bagnold who was a real maverick. Bagnold has contributed to the mechanics of sediment transport so significantly that he and Hans Einstein are considered the foundational kingpins of this field of knowledge. He fought in the Second World War in the Libyan Desert and during his spare time (it’s not a joke; he found it), he observed the physical properties of the massive sand dunes. After the war, he went back to the Sahara on a research expedition that was funded by the Royal Society of London, to complete the work that he had begun during the war. Based on his research, he wrote the “The Physics of Wind Blown and Desert Dunes” which was the first book of its kind on the subject. He had given a complementary signed copy to Sir Claude. On one of my visits to his house, Sir Claude gifted that copy to me.

I had met Bagnold before receiving the copy of his book from Sir Claude. He used to come to Hydraulics Lab at Imperial College to do his experimental work. For one of his projects, he had set up his experimental apparatus close to mine. We talked a few times. Usually, we would nod acknowledgment and greet each other. He observed the traditional British reserve (he was quite friendly and easy to talk to, though) and I was not a greatly outgoing person myself.

Sir Claude took personal interest in my well-being. He was greatly touched that I was doing research with my own personal resources. He arranged for me a job at Wallingford when I had nearly finished my research work, which in the end I had to reject (for my own reasons). He also said he had a friend with the World Bank who could be helpful in getting me a job. At that time, I hadn’t quite sorted out what I wanted to do after my Ph.D. I was not excited for the World Bank job. But I whole-heartedly appreciated his interest nonetheless and willingness to help me. I met him for the last time in 1970 when I left London.

Gerald Lacey

At Sir Claude’s suggestion (I think) I sought to meet Mr. Lacey. He worked for a Consulting Engineering Company in London for a couple of days every week. I am inclined to believe that the Company had kept him on payroll probably to capitalize on his name because he was more than eighty years old when I met him.

I went to his Company’s office at the appointed time and I was ushered into his room, which was quite small. He met me graciously (and warmly). He was displeased with me that I had acknowledged Henderson in my paper but was pleased that I had used his name in the title of my paper (Rationalization of Lacey’s Regime Flow Equations). He believed erroneously that Henderson had adversely criticized his (Lacey’s) work in his paper. After some pleasantries, he asked me my age. I said 33 or 34. He said he was thirty eight years old when he had published his first paper (Stable Channels in Alluvium. This paper became a classic at least in the Commonwealth countries). Then he offered me a reprint of this paper and signed it with a trembling hand. He informed me that that was the last copy that he had and was pleased to give it to me.

Then we went out for lunch at some restaurant. He told me during the lunch that he was the examiner (or one of the examiners) of Thomas Blench (the last expatriate director of the Irrigation Research Institute, Lahore. He had also written a discussion of my paper) who had written his Ph.D. thesis on Lacey’s work. He had attempted to provide a (questionable) theoretical basis to Lacey’s work from the fundamental equations of Fluid Mechanics.

Blench and Hans Einstein fought running battles in the Transactions of the ASCE. Einstein denigrated the empirical regime approach, which Blench believed could be supported from Newtonian mechanics. After lunch, I returned to my digs. That was the last and the only time I had met Lacey.

Although I did not greatly benefit directly from their individual research contributions, my mentors had great influence on my professional life. And my coming to know them, meeting them, and talking with them, was quite accidental. No body had introduced me to any of them. They were just there in their own part of the world and circumstances made our paths to intersect. I received a great deal of inspiration from them. Although they had not made any earth shaking contributions (their work would continue to be quoted in books and research journals), their influence on me was great.