The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering

The scope of engineering

In looking for the winners, the judging panel will be seeking outstanding engineering-led advances that have produced tangible and widespread public benefit.

Since humankind first picked up a flint as a tool, engineering has shaped the world and defined the future. Today, from fashion to fusion, engineering is fundamental to every aspect of our existence.

All engineering is about the real-world application of science, often in a business context, to drive innovation, leading to constantly improved or entirely new products and services. Often, the creative combination of existing technologies leads not just to a new product but to an entirely new industry.

Engineering promotes the sharing of ideas and information, empowering the desire for freedom, security and a better quality of life. Engineering underpins almost every detail of daily life while helping us tackle the biggest global challenges facing the world: providing enough food and water for a burgeoning population; a sustainable lifestyle to preserve the planet; ending the scourge of preventable disease; tackling poverty and providing clean, green energy for all.

The fruits of engineering work range from nano-scale devices to get medicines to where they are needed in the body to the world’s biggest – and greenest – buildings; from the pinpoint accuracy of robots that perform keyhole heart surgery to the proliferation of ever-faster multiplatform broadband applications; from hi-tech fabrics to make the smart clothes of the future to new, sources of energy to power the world.

As well as its tangible and pervasive effects, modern engineering shapes and benefits society in many subtle, even hidden ways. Engineering underpins many aspects of culture, the arts and public life; it creates culture shift; it inspires, informs, educates and entertains.

Although the Prize is about looking forward, taking a look back in history can furnish fascinating examples of engineering that has, literally, changed the world.

Public health

Joseph Bazalgette’s network of sewers saved thousands in London from death by cholera and countless more across the world where the plans were adopted. The first antibiotic, penicillin, was identified and researched by a roll call of celebrated scientists and medical practictioners but it was Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau, a chemical engineer, who designed the first mass production plant that brought the life-saving drug to the public.

Communications

Samuel Morse’s telegraph opened the way for a whole new world of communications that spanned the telephone, the mobile phone and today’s instant messaging and internet video calls.

Air travel

The great engineering pioneer Sir Frank Whittle created the jet engine. At one point early in the process, he could not afford to renew the patent on his design with which he revolutionised flight and transformed world travel and trade.

Music

In the 1960s, Les Paul’s solid body guitar and pioneering special effects opened the way for the whole rock music genre and industry.

Motor transport

The Ford Model T opened up motorised transport to millions, with all the positive – and negative – impact that has had on the world. Engineers are now pioneering new, cleaner fuels for modern vehicles, including the biofuels rejected during the prohibition years by Henry Ford because they contained alcohol.

Film

The Lumière brothers first made motion pictures in 1892. Since then, countless millions of people across the world have been thrilled, entertained and informed through the medium of cinema, whether Hollywood, Bollywood, arthouse or blockbuster digital effects and 3D.

Personal computing

In the 1970s, owners of early PCs had to program their machines themselves; today’s users have access to a host of ready-to-use commercial and free software for work and play. Now, the desktop is being superseded by portable machines such as smartphones and tablets.

Fabric

The first fully artificial polymer fabric, nylon, was in great demand as part of the Second World War effort. Today’s innovative fabrics mean that more people the world over can enjoy fashion. But smart fabrics are now being designed with a more serious purpose – to make clothes with in-built sensors that monitor the wearer’s vital signs and symptoms.