Anthony George Maldon Michell, mechanical and hydraulic engineer and innovator, died at his home in Melbourne, Australia, on 17 February 1959 at the age of 88. He had achieved a legendary fame through his invention of the tilting-pad thrust-bearing, a device which made possible much of the modern development of steam and water turbines and of propeller drives for large, fast ships. This invention issued from a fertile union of mechanical art with exact science, and it was this union which gave all Michell’s work its special quality; his motto, quoted from Leonardo da Vinci on the title page of his book on lubrication, was ‘theory is the captain, practice the soldiers’. Michell wrote for the archives of the Society a biographical note which illuminates his personality as well as his career, and it is fitting that this should be reproduced verbatim: ‘His father John Michell, 1826-1891 and mother Grace Michell,
née
Rowse, 1828-1921 were both reared at or near Tavistock, Devon, and there married. After their marriage they emigrated to Port Phillip, Australia, 1854-5. He (A.G.M.M.) was born 21 June 1870, at Islington, while they were on a visit to parents and relatives in England, 1870-3. He had one brother (John Henry Michell, F.R.S., 1863-1940) and three sisters, all senior to him by several years. ‘The paternal surname is pronounced with stress on the first syllable and with that syllable rhyming with “rich” and “which”. ‘His first name is that of his maternal grandfather, Anthony Rowse, 1798- 1866, the name being traditional in the family as that of a legendary French ancestor, Anthony (or Antoine) Rousse, of uncertain date and dubious authenticity, supposed to have brought the family stock from France. It seems probable, having regard to the persistent nonconformity of the family in England, that if there was such an ancestor he was an Huguenot. The paternal family, like others of the same name now diffused through the south of England, was also probably in part of French provenance, but of much earlier than Huguenot migration to England. But little is known to him of his ancestry beyond what is included above.
Discussion: “A Comparison of Tilting Pad Thrust Bearing Lubricant Supply Methods” (Mikula, A. M., and Gregory, R. S., 1983, ASME J. Lubr. Technol., 105, pp. 39–45)
