Identity area
Type of entity
Authorized form of name
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
Born in Walsall in 1924, Francis Tombs worked as a St John Ambulance first aider during the Second World War. In 1946 he worked as an electrical engineer with the General Electric Company (GEC). He joined the South of Scotland Electricity Board (SSEB) in 1969 as Director of Engineering and was later promoted to Deputy Chair and, in 1974, Chair. In 1977, he was invited to head the Electricity Council, the industry’s supervisory body, and held the post for three and a half years. Lord Tombs became chair of the Weir Group in the early 1980s and took over as Chair of Rolls-Royce in 1985, having been a board member for three years.
Lord Tombs was knighted in 1978 and became a life peer in 1990, taking his title from a Warwickshire village. He sat as a Crossbench peer until his retirement in 2015 and was a member of the Lords’ Science and Technology and Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee; he also chaired a Select Committee on sustainable development.
He served as President of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, now the Institution of Engineering and Technology, in 1981 and was a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Lord Tombs was the University of Strathclyde’s second Chancellor and held the post from 1991 to 1997.
Places
Legal status
Functions, occupations and activities
Mandates/sources of authority
Internal structures/genealogy
General context
Relationships area
Related entity
Identifier of related entity
Category of relationship
Dates of relationship
Description of relationship
Access points area
Subject access points
Place access points
Occupations
Control area
Authority record identifier
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
ISAAR(CPF): International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families, International Council on Archives (2nd edition, 2003); Rules for the construction of personal, place and corporate names, National Council on Archives (1997).
Status
Level of detail
Dates of creation, revision and deletion
Created by Rachael Jones, May 2020
Language(s)
Script(s)
Sources
Tribute to Lord Tombs, University of Strathclyde: https://www.strath.ac.uk/whystrathclyde/news/tributepaidtoformerstrathclydechancellorlordtombs/
Institution of Engineering and Technology obituary: https://www.theiet.org/membership/member-news/obituaries/obituary-news/lord-tombs-of-brailes-bsc-dsc-freng-ceng-honfiet-may-1924-april-2020/