Ernest Cullwick
Professor and head of the Department of Electrical Engineering (1937-46) at the University of Alberta, Ernest Geoffrey Cullwick was born May 24, 1903 in Wolverhampton, England to parents Edith Ada (Ascough) and Herbert Ernest Cullwick. He earned a BA (1925) from Cambridge and in 1925, was awarded a Foundation Scholarship by that university’s Downing College. He obtained an MA (1929) from Cambridge before going on to earn a DSc from the University of St Andrews.An engineer with the British Thomson Houston Co (1925-26) and Canadian General Electric Co Ltd (1926-28), Cullwick joined the University of British Columbia in 1928, working as an assistant professor of electrical engineering until 1935, when he was a lecturer at the Military College of Science in Woolwich, England. From 1935-37, he worked as an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of British Columbia.
From 1942-46, Cullwick was director of electrical engineering with the Royal Canadian Navy, serving as electrical captain of "L" Branch in 1945-46. In 1946, he was named to the Order of the British Empire.
In 1947 and for the next two years, Cullwick was director of the Electrical Research Division of the Defense Research Board of Canada in Ottawa. From 1949-67, he was professor of electrical engineering and dean of the Faculty of Applied Science at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. In 1958, he was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
First chairman of the Watson-Watt Chair in Electrical Engineering at St Andrews from 1949-70, Cullwick was also Watson-Watt Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Dundee.
Cullwick married Maimie Ruttan Boucher in 1929; they had two children, a son, Robert, and a daughter.
Cullwick passed away May 1, 1981 in Dover, England.