Christopher Cockerell

Sir Christopher Sydney Cockerell (1910 to 1999) was a British electronic and mechanical engineer, born in Cambridge, the son of the Fitzwilliam Museum director Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell. After an engineering degree and two years as a pupil engineer at W. H. Allen and Sons of Bedford, he joined the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company at Writtle, where he became head of aircraft research and development in 1937 and led the team that produced the R1155 receiver and T1154 transmitter used by the RAF. He resigned from Marconi in 1951, designed motor boats at Oulton Broad, and in 1955 patented the amphibious hovercraft. The Saunders-Roe manned model SRN1 crossed the English Channel on 25 July 1959. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1967, was knighted in 1969, and filed 98 patents in his lifetime.