John Lienhard, lauded author, photographer and award-winning narrator of the public radio segment “The Engines of Our Ingenuity,” is an M.D. Anderson professor emeritus of mechanical engineering and history at the University of Houston.

In 1951, he earned his bachelor of science from the University of Washington. He later received a master’s and doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, and he holds two honorary doctorates.

Lienhard is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and an honorary member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He has held faculty positions at several universities, working in the area of thermal and fluid systems.

Since 1988, he has written and hosted nearly 2,000 episodes of “Engines,” which is produced by KUHF-FM, the University of Houston’s public radio station. Using the medium of history, the program celebrates creativity and invention and shows how they shape culture and technology.

For his broadcast work, Lienhard has received a number of awards, including the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Ralph Coates Roe Medal for contributions to the public understanding of technology and the 1991 Portrait Division Award from the American Women in Radio and Television.

Beside his academic career and broadcast experience, Lienhard is also a respected photographer. Over his 20-year engineering career, he repeatedly used high-speed photography to reveal a wide range of physical phenomena and examples of human creativity in action.