Departmental homepageProfessor Hutchings studied at Cambridge, completing a degree in Natural Sciences in 1971 and a PhD in Physics in 1975. He was a Research Fellow at St John's College, and joined the academic staff in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy in 1977. He was appointed Reader in Tribology in 1997 before moving to the Department of Engineering in 2001 as Professor of Manufacturing Engineering. He has been Emeritus Professor of Manufacturing Engineering since 2017. He was also the chairman of St John’s Innovation Centre Ltd from 1996 to 2024.
Professor Hutchings taught on a wide range of courses in Materials Science and Engineering over 40 years, and co-founded a short course for industry, the Cambridge Tribology Course, which ran from 1993 to 2019.
Professor Hutchings has long-standing interests in materials engineering, particularly surface engineering, and tribology of all classes of materials – the science and technology of friction, wear and lubrication. He has also investigated the fundamental engineering aspects of inket printing in a manufacturing context. His current research is into the history of tribology.
I. M. Hutchings, ‘Tribology: Friction and Wear of Engineering Materials’, Edward Arnold, UK (1992). 2nd edn. with P.H. Shipway, Butterworth-Heinemann (2017) pp. 388, ISBN: 978-0-08-100910-9.
I.M. Hutchings, ‘Leonardo da Vinci’s studies of friction’, Wear 360-361 (2016) 51-66.
I. M. Hutchings and G. D. Martin (eds.), Inkjet technology for digital fabrication, Wiley-Blackwell (2013) pp. 392, ISBN: 978-0-470-68198-5.
I.M. Hutchings, ‘Leonardo da Vinci’s studies of rolling-element, disc and sector bearings’, Proc. IMechE Part J: J. Engineering Tribology, 238(4) (2024) 372–389.
