John Millington (professor)

John Millington (11 May 1779 – 10 July 1868) was an English civil engineer, lawyer, scientist, and academic who spent the latter half of his career in the United States. Selected for the inaugural Chair of Civil Engineering at London University in 1827, he became the first person formally appointed to teach civil engineering at the university-level in England—and possibly in the English-speaking world. Millington is also remembered for providing the opening lecture of the London Mechanics' Institution (now Birkbeck, University of London), delivering the first series of Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, serving for more than a decade as Chair of Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, and Engineering at the College of William & Mary, and being part of the original faculty of the University of Mississippi.