Institutions
In 1805, with John Hall and others, he formed the Society of Master Millwrights, acting as its treasurer.
He was a member of the Royal Society of Arts, becoming a Vice-president and Chairman of the Committee of Mechanics.
Donkin was one of the originators and a vice-president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, which was founded by Henry Robinson Palmer, one of his pupils. He also helped the Institution to obtain its Royal Charter in 1828, advancing 100 guineas towards the costs.
Donkin was elected a member of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers in 1835 and served as its president in 1843.
He was a founder member of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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Famous quotes containing the word institutions:
“The way in which men cling to old institutions after the life has departed out of them, and out of themselves, reminds me of those monkeys which cling by their tails—aye, whose tails contract about the limbs, even the dead limbs, of the forest, and they hang suspended beyond the hunter’s reach long after they are dead. It is of no use to argue with such men. They have not an apprehensive intellect, but merely, as it were a prehensile tail.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We as a nation need to be reeducated about the necessary and sufficient conditions for making human beings human. We need to be reeducated not as parents—but as workers, neighbors, and friends; and as members of the organizations, committees, boards—and, especially, the informal networks that control our social institutions and thereby determine the conditions of life for our families and their children.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)