Eric Trist is one of the founding members of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, where he was first involved with the war office selection boards with Sutherland and Bion. His work at Tavistock led to ground-breaking theoretical advances, in the form of Socio-Technical Systems, and numerous innovative contributions to our understanding of social and organizational life from the socio-psychological, socio-technical and socio-ecological perspectives. After moving to the U.S., where he worked first at UCLA then spent many years at the University of Pennsylvania, his influence and notoriety were extensive, leading to his being awarded the Order of the British Empire.
A youtube interview with Eric Trist by Stuart Winby is linked.