Abstract
WILLIAM REDE HAWTHORNE, who is succeeding Prof. A. H. Gibson, was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He obtained first-class honours in the Mechanical Sciences Tripos and was awarded the Rex Moir Prize. On leaving Cambridge he joined the firm of Babcock and Wilcox, where for a short time he worked on boiler research. He then obtained a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship, which enabled him go to the United States and work for two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on combustion research. On the completion of this work he returned to England to his old firm. When the Second World War broke out he joined the research staff of the Air Ministry, being later transferred to the Ministry of Aircraft Production. He worked for a short time at the Aircraft Testing Establishment at Boscombe Down and then moved to the Engine Department of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. At Farnborough he was quickly drawn into the work proceeding there on gas turbines, and in a short time was put in charge of this work. In 1944 Dr. Hawthorne was transferred to the headquarters branch of the work, where he became responsible for directing the work on gas turbine research. At the end of the War he returned to the United States and took up a post as lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is at present the Westinghouse professor of gas turbines. Prof. Hawthorne is known for the researches directed by him on gas turbines during the War and for his interest in the combination of fluid flow and combustion usually termed 'gas dynamics'.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Prof. W. R. Hawthorne. Nature 163, 355 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/163355b0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/163355b0