Sir Andrew Noble, 1st Baronet

Infobox Scientist |name =Andrew Noble
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birth_date =13 September 1831
birth_place =Greenock
death_date =22 October 1915
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citizenship =Scottish
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field =physics
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known_for =ballistics
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Sir Andrew Noble, 1st Baronet KCB (13 September 1831 - 22 October 1915) was a Scottish physicist noted for his work on ballistics and gunnery.

Born at Greenock, he was educated at Edinburgh Academy and at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He was commissioned in the Royal Artillery in 1849, promoted captain in 1855 and became secretary of the Royal Artillery Institution. He was secretary of the British government select committee on the replacement of smooth-bore cannon with rifled artillery and carried out research on the subject. In 1859 he became Assistant-Inspector of Artillery and in 1860 a member of the Ordnance Select Committee and of the Committee on Explosives, remaining on the committee until it was dissolved in 1880.

In 1860 he joined Armstrong's armaments works in Elswick, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where Noble continued research into artillery, in particular inventing ways of measuring breech pressures, and later in 1862 small time intervals to determine the acceleration of projectiles as they travelled down the barrel.

He worked with Sir Frederick Abel on improving the properties of black powder. He was awarded the Order of the Bath in 1881 and knighted in 1893. He served as High Sheriff of Northumberland in 1896. He became chairman of Armstrong's company in 1900 and was made a baronet in 1902. Noble claimed that all the Japanese guns which sank the Russian fleet at the crucial battle of Tsushima in 1905, had been manufactured at Elswick.

In 1871, Andrew Noble bought Jesmond Dene House, which was originally designed by John Dobson. He later commissioned Norman Shaw and local architect Frank Rich to double the size of the house adding a west wing, billiard room, Gothic porch, Great Hall and a fleet of bedrooms. Jesmond Dene House is now a high class hotel and restaurant.

Noble's youngest daughter Ethel married Alfred Cochrane cricketer and poet who was Company Secretary at Armstrongs. Noble's third son John Noble was a businessman and was created a Baronet in his own right in 1923. The latter's youngest son Michael Noble became a prominent Conservative politician and was created a life peer as Baron Glenkinglas in 1974.

References

*Kidd, Charles, Williamson, David (editors). "Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage" (1990 edition). New York: St Martin's Press, 1990.
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