Keith Duckworth

Keith Duckworth was an English mechanical engineer, born in Blackburn, Lancashire, in 1933. He was educated at Giggleswick School, served his national service in the Royal Air Force and studied engineering at Imperial College London, graduating with a BSc in 1955. He worked briefly for Lotus as a gearbox engineer before founding the racing engine firm Cosworth in 1958 with fellow Lotus employee Mike Costin. He is best known for designing the Cosworth DFV, the Double Four Valve engine that Ford financed at the urging of Colin Chapman. The DFV made its debut in the 1967 Dutch Grand Prix in the Lotus 49, where Jim Clark won, and from 1968 it was sold to all teams and became a standard of Formula One. Its stressed-member mounting on the chassis became the usual arrangement in the sport. With Ford he also agreed in 1984 to build the Ford-Cosworth turbocharged V6 engine, and he died in Northampton in 2005.