Aerospace & Aerothermal Engineering - History

Frank Whittle, well known as the inventor of the jet engine, studied at the Department of Engineering in 1934. A brief description of his achievements is chronicled in the website developed to commemorate the 125th anniversary of engineering in Cambridge.

Less well-known is Professor Sir Bennett Melvill Jones, who held the Francis Mond Professorship of Aeronautical Engineering 1919-35 at the Department.

Professor Bennett Melvill Jones gained his place in engineering history by demonstrating the importance of streamlining on the design of aircraft.

Following this great tradition of innovation, Professors John Denton and Bill Dawes developed, in the 1970s, computational fluid mechanics code that has become an industry standard. It is a remarkable fact that turbomachines anywhere in the world are likely to have been designed using their software which was developed in Cambridge.