BAKER, SIR BENJAMIN (1840-1907), English engineer, was born at Keyford, Frome, Somerset, on March 31, 1840, and, after receiving his early training in a South Wales ironworks, became associated with Sir John Fowler in London. He was Fowler's chief assistant in the construction of the Metropolitan and District railways (London). He designed the cylindrical ves sel in which Cleopatra's Needle, now standing on the Thames embankment, London, was brought over from Egypt to England in 1877-78. He made a thorough study of bridge construction, on which he wrote a series of important papers from 1867 on wards, and he was associated with Fowler in the design and erection of the Forth- bridge completed in 189o. Fowler and Baker were consulted by the Egyptian Government on many important engineering undertakings. He sat on the commission appointed by Lord Cromer to consider Sir William Willcocks's plan for the storage of Nile water for irrigation purposes, and was consulting engineer for the making of the Aswan dam, opened in 1902. Sir Benjamin Baker, who also had a large share in the introduction of the system widely adopted in London of construct ing intra-urban railways in deep tubular tunnels built up of cast iron segments, obtained an extremely large professional practice, ranging over almost every branch of civil engineering. He served on many government and municipal commissions, and was a member of many learned societies, rendering especially valuable services to the Institution of Civil Engineers, on the council of which he sat for many years. He received a K.C.M.G. in 1890, and a K.C.B. in 1902. He died at Pangbourne, Berks, on May 19, 1907.