Isambard Kingdom Brunel

He was a heavy smoker. He suffered a stroke in 1859 and died after ten days; he was just 53 years old.

He was born to a French civil engineer Sir Marc Isambard Brunel and Sophia Kingdom in Hampshire. He had two sisters. His father was a successful professional and he had a happy childhood.

His father tutored him in drawing and observational techniques. From a young age his father instilled in him a love for civil engineering.

He was sent to Dr. Morrell’s boarding school in Hove when he was eight. His father was very particular that Isambard receive high quality education and thus he sent him to the College of Caen in Normandy and then Lyc�e Henri-IV in Paris.

His father, though a brilliant engineer, was poor with managing finances and had accumulated a lot of debts because of which he was sent to a debtor’s prison. He was however released later on.

Isambard tried for a seat in the famous French engineering school �cole Polytechnique. But the school refused to accept him as he was a foreigner. He then became an apprentice under horologist Abraham-Louis Breguet and came back to England in 1822.

On returning to England he started working with his father. The work to build a tunnel under London's River Thames began in 1825 and a couple of years later Isambard Brunel was appointed Resident Engineer on the project which his father was managing.

A major accident occurred during the building of the tunnel in 1828 in which two senior miners were killed. Brunel himself narrowly escaped death and was seriously injured. This forced the work to stop for several years.

In 1831, a competition was held for finding the best design to build a bridge across the Avon river gorge at Clifton in Bristol. Brunel won the competition and got the opportunity to design the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

Work on the Clifton Suspension Bridge began in 1831. The bridge had the longest span of any bridge in the world at that time. However, the work had to be stopped because of the Queen Square Riots. The bridge would not be completed within Brunel’s lifetime.

He was appointed chief engineer of the Great Western Railway in 1833. He decided to use a broad gauge of 7 ft (2,134 mm) for the tracks which created much controversy as most British Railways of that time used standard gauge. The railway started running its first trains in 1838.

He is best known as the chief engineer of the Great Western Railway project. The railway was built to connect London with the west of England and Wales. He implemented many innovations in his design of the railway which later came to be known as "God's Wonderful Railway".