Isambard Kingdom Brunel Brunel's achievements as an engineer. The 2013 album "The Last Ship" by Sting includes the song "Ballad of the Great Eastern". Isambard Kingdom Brunel Isambard Kingdom Brunel (; 9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859), was an English mechanical and civil engineer who is considered "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history", "one of the 19th-century engineering giants", and "one of the greatest figures of the Industrial Revolution, [who] changed the face of the English landscape with his groundbreaking designs and ingenious constructions". Brunel built dockyards, the Great Western Railway, a series of steamships including the
Marc Isambard Brunel 1828, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Brunel was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1834. In 1845 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Brunel several times became involved in unprofitable projects. As a consequence, by the beginning of 1821 he was deep in debt, and in May of that year he was tried and committed to the King's Bench Prison, a debtors prison in Southwark. Prisoners in a debtors prison were allowed to have their family with them,