Andrew Clennel Palmer

Andrew Clennel Palmer (26 May 1938 – 21 December 2019) was a British engineer who worked on offshore geotechnical problems of submarine pipeline design and the study of the properties of ice. He spent much of his career as a teacher and academic researcher, at the University of Liverpool, Cambridge University, the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, and the National University of Singapore, punctuated by work in industry, while also serving as an expert witness and as a member of various industrial and academic committees. Born in Colchester, Palmer was the son of Gerald Basil Coote Palmer, headmaster of Mark Hall Comprehensive School in Harlow, and Muriel née Howes. After attending the Royal Liberty School in Gidea Park, he became the first student from his school to go on to study at Cambridge University, reading Mechanical Sciences at Pembroke College and completing his undergraduate degree in 1961. He achieved first-class honours in his first two years (the third being unclassed). Daniel C. Drucker was visiting Cambridge while Palmer was a student and was sufficiently impressed to extend an invitation to return to Brown University and perform research there, which Palmer accepted after graduation, receiving a doctorate in 1965. Drucker said that his work could have been worth three doctorates. His work at Brown included plasticity, glacial creep and ice lensing. After his doctorate, Palmer spent two years as a lecturer at the University of Liverpool, but was dissatisfied with the university's engineering curriculum and returned to Cambridge in 1967, where he became a fellow of Churchill College. His initial research there was on the physical properties of soil and how temperature affected soil plasticity; he was able to analogise from the stress–strain relationships in metals, which were more understood.