Leonard Bairstow, 1880-1963

Abstract

Leonard Bairstow was born at Halifax in Yorkshire on 25 June 1880 and began his education in the elementary and secondary schools of Halifax. In 1898 he obtained a scholarship at the Royal College of Science, London, where he was a fellow student of H . E. Wimperis, who declared in later years: ‘I remember that, for several decades there, the most brilliant student that had been produced by the College was Professor Bairstow. He had an uncanny faculty of making himself acquainted with and making completely original suggestions on subjects which we did not think he knew anything about.' He became a Whitworth Scholar in 1902 and took prizes in mechanics and astrophysics. In 1904 he entered the Engineering Department of the National Physical Laboratory. There he worked under Dr T. E. (later Sir Thomas) Stanton on problem s of fatigue and of aerodynamics. In 1909 he was appointed to the staff of the new section of Aerodynamics (later called the Aerodynamics Division), of which he became the Assistant (or Principal) in charge. During this period he carried out some pioneer investigations into wind-tunnel design, and made important developments and practical applications of the theory of aircraft stability due to G. H. Bryan. This theory he illustrated by the use of small mica models of aircraft, and the necessary measurements of aerodynamic derivatives were made in the wind tunnel. In 1917 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and made a G.B.E. Glazebrook had offered him the post of Superintendent of the Aerodynamics Department at the N.P.L. but Bairstow resigned and was appointed to the Air Board to work for Sir David Henderson on the design of aircraft and on aerodynamics research. There Bairstow worked at the Hotel Cecil as deputy to Alec Ogilvie and, with his wide experience, was able to co-ordinate the departmental work on structural strength, aerodynamics, performance and air screws.