LANCHESTER

UNITED KINGDOM (see also List of Individuals)

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23.10.1868 Lewisham/UK - 8.3.1946 Birmingham/UK

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Frederick William Lanchester was educated at Hartley College, Southampton, and the National School of Science, South Kensington. He joined in 1889 the gas engine works in Birmingham and improved the product by developing a pendulum governor and a starter. After five years Lanchester set up his own small motor-car firm, building a five-seater one cylinder 5 HP model with a chain drive that first took the road in 1896. He won with a second model the Gold Medal of the Royal Automobile Club in 1898. By 1903, the firm was bankrupt, however.

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Lanchester's interest in flight bore fruit in Aerial Flight in 1907, an expansion of work he had done over the previous twelve years in the vortex theory of sustentation of flight. Its importance was recognized by his appointment first to the Advisory Committee on Aeronautics in 1909 under Lord Rayleigh (1842-1919). Lanchester's laboratories founded in 1925 allowed to undertake development and research work. When his health broke down in 1934 the firm also closed. He consoled himself with poetry and music. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Birmingham in 1919; the Alfred Ewing Gold Medal of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1941, and the James Watt International Medal of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1945. His closing years were clouded by illness, blindness and financial difficulties; he had no children. Lanchester will be remembered as a pioneer engineer of outstanding ability, whose practical work for the British automobile industry and theoretical contributions to the problems of aerial flight gained for him international recognition.

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_{Anonymous (1913). F.W. Lanchester MICE. Flight 5(1): 3. P}

_{Anonymous (1946). Dr. F.W. Lanchester, FRS. Engineering 161: 256. P}

_{Anonymous (1946). Frederick William Lanchester. Aeronautical Journal 50: 237-239. P}

_{Anonymous (1969). Lanchester, Frederick William. A biographical dictionary of scientists: 304-305, T.I. Williams, ed. Black: London.}

_{Kingsford, P.W. (1960). F.W. Lanchester - A life of an engineer. Arnold: London.}

_{Lanchester, F.W. (1907). Aerodynamics: Constituting volume 1 of a complete work on aerial flight. Constable: London.}

_{Lanchester, F.W. (1916). Aircraft in warfare: The dawn of the forth arm. Constable: London. Lanchester, F.W. (1936). The theory of dimensions and its application for engineers. Lockwood: London.}