Frederick W. Lanchester

Frederick William Lanchester was an English polymath and engineer whose work touched automotive engineering, aerodynamics and the mathematics that became known as operations research, a field he is credited with co-inventing. He became a pioneering British motor car builder, a pursuit that led him to build what is described as the first British petrol car in 1895 and to found a car company built around his own engineering solutions, several of which were later adopted across the wider industry even as Lanchester himself struggled to turn his inventions into lasting commercial success. Beyond cars, his work on the circulation theory of flight and on aerofoil theory contributed to the early theoretical understanding of heavier than air flight, and colleagues regarded him as one of the most original engineering minds of his generation. Lanchester was born on 23 October 1868 and died on 8 March 1946.