My father, Peter Ackers, who has died aged 97, was a civil engineer and an expert in hydraulics. He worked on projects all over the world, involving hydropower, tidal energy, coastal protection, reservoir spillways and other hydraulic structures.
Born in the Liverpool suburb of Bootle, he was the son of Mary (nee Jones), a supervisor in a quilt-making factory, and Peter Ackers, a carpenter/joiner in the Mersey docks. He attended Bootle grammar school, where he excelled at physics and mathematics.
He studied civil engineering at the City & Guilds College (part of Imperial College), London. The course was compressed into two years because of the second world war, and its scope broadened to include air-frame design, useful for the war effort. He was also an air-raid warden, reporting to a unit behind the Royal Albert Hall, and suffered a near miss when a shell hit the road next to him, breaking the glass in a nearby telephone box.
After graduating in 1944, he worked at the National Physical Laboratory and the Bristol Aeroplane Company, where he was involved in designing the Bristol Freighter and Brabazon aircraft.
In 1946 he moved into civil engineering, with periods in local government in Preston and Stoke-on-Trent, during which time he obtained an MSc (Eng) from Imperial College. In 1956 he moved to the Hydraulics Research Station (now HR Wallingford), rising to the position of assistant director, and became active in the International Association for Hydraulic Research.
In 1972 he started working as a consultant with Binnie & Partners and became a visiting professor at Imperial College. He worked on protection against typhoon wave attack on the sea defences at High Island reservoir, Hong Kong; the design of the Greater Cairo wastewater system; innovative siphon spillways at reservoirs in Hong Kong; a rough-cut unlined rock tunnel to supply water beneath the Andes to Lima; and many other projects.
He was also an expert adviser to the committee that investigated the feasibility of a Severn estuary tidal energy scheme, which could have provided 7% of the UK’s electricity generation as “green” and predictable energy. The committee, led by Sir Hermann Bondi, reported to the government in 1981. It was a huge disappointment to him that this project, much larger but similar to the successful tidal energy barrage on the estuary of the Rance river in France, was not taken up.
He also wrote or contributed to about 70 technical papers and publications, and retired in 1994.
Then he worked on improving his French – he enjoyed travelling, especially on cultural guided tours and river cruises – and raised money for the RNLI. He donated his library of technical books to a university in Ethiopia.
In 1949 he married Margaret McGeagh, who was born in Bootle on the same day as him. She died in 2015. He is survived by their three children, Sheila, David and me, by four grandsons and by two great-grandchildren.
