A Tribute to Eric John Watson (1924-2015)

摘要

In 1944 he was then drafted, contemporaneously with Bryan Thwaites, to the Aerodynamics Division of the National Physics Laboratory at Teddington. James Lighthill had arrived one year earlier, Michael Glauert would arrive one year later. All four pursued successful academic careers in the second half of the 20th Century. Sydney Goldstein, who spent the war years at the NPL, led this Cambridge quartet and gave them only general guidelines of the research they might pursue, which meant in practice that they were left more or less to their own devices. Aerodynamic research they each pursued, vigorously and successfully. Eric published no fewer than seven accounts of his research in the Reports and Memoranda series of the Aeronautical Research Council of London. His interests turned increasingly to boundary-layer theory and the penultimate of these reports [1] would be pursued later.