Richard V. Southwell

Richard Vynne Southwell, born in 1888, was a British engineer and applied mathematician whose early career joined structures and aerodynamics. Educated at Norwich School and Trinity College, Cambridge, he took first-class results in the Mathematical and Mechanical Sciences Tripos examinations in 1909 and 1910, won the John Winbolt Prize, and became a Fellow of Trinity in 1912 and a lecturer there in 1914. After practical training at Vickers in Sheffield and service in France with the Army Service Corps, he ran the design office at the Royal Navy airship station at Kingsnorth from 1915 to 1918. He then led aerodynamic and structural research at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, and from 1920 headed the Aerodynamics Department of the National Physical Laboratory.