Sir Robin Saxby inducted into City of London Engineering Hall of Fame

Main image: (from left to right) Sir Robin Saxby, The Lord Mayor of London Michael Mainelli and Professor Gordon Masterton. Photograph courtesy of Arm

Sir Robin Saxby, the founding CEO and former chairman of Arm, has been inducted into the City of London Engineering Hall of Fame in a ceremony on the High Walkway of Tower Bridge in London on 31 October 2024.

Sir Robin was one of seven newly inducted, iconic engineers connected with the City of London and only the second IT entrepreneur to be honoured as part of the City of London Engineering Hall of Fame, the first being software engineer, IT entrepreneur and venture philanthropist Dame Stephanie Shirley. Sir Robin was presented with a certificate acknowledging the award by The Lord Mayor of London Michael Mainelli.

The accolade was launched in 2020 by the The Worshipful Company of Engineers – soon joined by six other Worshipful Companies with a connection to engineering – including the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists. There are now 14 inductees whose lives tell the story of almost 500 years of world-beating engineering innovations.

In the Hall of Fame, Sir Robin and Dame Shirley sit alongside engineering pioneers such as Sir Henry Bessemer (1813-1898), the engineer and inventor who made it possible to mass produce high quality steel, and Sir Hugh Myddelton (1560-1631), the civil, water and mining engineer who brought clean water to the City of London.

Sir Robin – one of the first ‘IT pioneers’ to be interviewed by Archives of IT back in 2017 – joined Arm full-time as the first CEO in February 1991. He led the transformation of the company from a 12-person startup to one of the most valuable tech companies in the UK with a market capitalization of over $10 billion at the end of his tenure, and some $150 billion now.

Sir Robin Saxby, to the right with his hand raised, with the rest of the Arm team. Photograph courtesy of Arm

But, as the warm reactions to news of his induction into the Engineering Hall of Fame show, Sir Robin has achieved much more than that during his career.

At AIT, we are particularly grateful for his enthusiastic support of our work in education, enabling us to inspire future engineers and technologists by taking part in school visits – sush as his recent visit to an Essex primary school with Ama Frimpong, IET Young Woman in Engineering 2022 – and funding the creation of engaging computing content for primary school students.