Who is your favorite engineer and why?

My role model engineer is Isambard Kingdom Brunel, an obvious choice I suppose.  But it appealed to me the way any engineering challenge seemed to be of interest to him, be it bridges, trains, ships, and so on.  Plus going to Brunel University may have added a bit of bias.

The current engineers that get my respect these days are the crew working on Bloodhound SSC - I know you can do it, I have all my fingers crossed for you!

John Harrison, for his work on H1, H2, H3, H4 and H5.

The invention of these clocks, the last of which was a small miracle, allowed accurate navigation and exploration of the world by ocean. All clocks at the time used pendulums and needed to be perfectly still to remain accurate, making them useless on a the waves. Without an accurate timepiece, it was impossible (apart from using the very complex and time-consuming astronomical method) for the navigator to know his longitudinal location.

A visit to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, should be compulsory for anyone who ever needs to tell the time!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison