Sir Hugh Eyre Campbell Beaver, KBE (4 May 1890 – 16 January 1967) was an English-South African civil engineer, industrialist and bureaucrat, who founded the Guinness World Records (then known as Guinness Book of Records). He was Director-General of the Ministry of Works and managing director at Guinness Brewery.
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Biography
Beaver was born on 4 May 1890 in Johannesburg, South Africa. He was educated at Wellington College, Berkshire.
Beaver spent two years in the Indian police from 1910 and returned to England in 1921, joining the civil engineering firm Sir Alexander Gibb & Partners, as the personal assistant of Sir Alexander Gibb. Upon the request of Canadian Prime Minister R. B. Bennett, he led a mission to Canada developing Canadian harbours. He directed the reconstruction of the harbour of Saint John in New Brunswick after it was destroyed by a fire in 1931. He then became partner at Sir Alexander Gibb & Partners, and worked mainly on factory building and the re-industrialisation of depressed areas in the UK.
During World War II he was Director-General in the newly formed Ministry of Works, and was in charge of the whole wartime programme of works.