Sir John Fowler, 1st Baronet

Sir John Fowler (1817 to 1898) was an English civil engineer who specialised in railways and their infrastructure across most of the nineteenth century. Born in Wadsley, Sheffield, he trained under John Towlerton Leather and worked for John Urpeth Rastrick before setting up as a consulting engineer and moving to London in 1844. He was chief engineer of the Metropolitan Railway, the world's first underground railway, which opened between Paddington and Farringdon in 1863, and was engineer for the associated District and Hammersmith and City railways. With Benjamin Baker he designed the steel cantilever Forth Bridge, built from 1883 to 1890, and he advised on railway and engineering projects abroad, including schemes for the Khedive of Egypt. He was the youngest president of the Institution of Civil Engineers and was created a baronet after the Forth Bridge opened.