Peter Lawrenson

Peter John Lawrenson (12 March 1933 – 27 October 2017) was an Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Leeds who pioneered and championed the development of switched reluctance drive technology. He also made significant contributions to the analysis and computation of magnetic fields and electrical machines in general, writing several notable text books along with colleagues Kenneth Binns, Martyn Harris and J. Michael Stephenson and latterly with C.W. ("Bill") Trowbridge.

Biography Lawrenson was born in Prescot, Lancashire, and educated at the University of Manchester from which he held the degrees of BSc, MSc and DSc. From 1956 to 1961 he was a research engineer at GEC. His early published activities include work on linear electrical machines with Eric Laithwaite, in which the linear induction motor was considered as a propulsion means for the shuttle in textile weaving machines.

In 1961 Lawrenson was appointed a Lecturer in Electrical Engineering at the University of Leeds, from where his publications show growing interest in reluctance machines - initially AC-fed synchronous reluctance motors and later doubly-salient synchronous machines such as stepper motors (resulting in numerous further publications throughout the 1970s, often co-authored with research students and colleagues including Austin Hughes, Michael Stephenson, Paul Acarnley, Philip Blenkinsop, Norman Fulton and Jasmin Corda, to name but some of his co-workers). The first seminal paper on switched reluctance machines was published in 1980. He remained at Leeds for 30 years, being promoted to Reader in 1965 and Professor of Electrical Engineering in 1966. He retired from his chair in 1991 with the title Emeritus Professor, in order to devote his full-time attention to the growing business he had co-founded in Leeds, Switched Reluctance Drives Ltd.

Lawrenson is considered the father of the switched reluctance motor and associated drive technology.