John Ffowcs Williams

John "Shôn" Eirwyn Ffowcs Williams, FREng^[6] (born 25 May 1935) is Emeritus Rank Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge and a former Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (1996–2002).^[7] He may be best known for his contributions to Aeroacoustics, in particular for his work on Concorde. Together with one of his students, David L. Hawkings, he introduced the far-field integration method in Computational aeroacoustics based on Lighthill's acoustic analogy, known as the Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings analogy (FW-H).^[8] He is a holder of BSc, PhD, Hon. DSc (Soton), MA, ScD (Cantab).

Biography

Born in Wales in 1935, schooled in England and serving an engineering apprenticeship with Rolls-Royce before going to the University of Southampton, he always maintained a strong commitment to bring academic research to bear on industrial problems. He cofounded Topexpress Ltd, a consultancy company in Cambridge specialising in engineering science, was executive consultant to Rolls Royce and a director of VSEL plc. For 25 years he led the division in which Cambridge University's Fluid Mechanics, Aeronautics, Thermodynamics, and Turbomachinery work is concentrated.

He was admitted to his Professorial Fellowship at Emmanuel in 1973; he was the longest-serving professor in the University when he retired from his chair in 2002. He taught engineering for the College but, before becoming Master his main College contribution was serving on the Governing Body and its committees. He was the first holder of the Rank Chair of engineering established in 1972 in the field of Acoustics, coming to Cambridge from Imperial College London, where he held the Rolls-Royce Chair in theoretical Acoustics. His speciality was noise and vibration caused by unsteady flow. His main achievement was to persuade very good research students to tackle important but interesting problems which ranged from the aeroacoustics of supersonic flight, to the quietening of underwater platforms. His work helped make anti-sound useful for noise control and for stabilising unstable aeromechanical systems.

Awards and honours

• In 1984 he was awarded the Rayleigh Medal by the UK Institute of Acoustics.
• In 1989 he was awarded the Médaille Étrangère by the French Acoustic Society (SFA).^[9]
• For his contributions to the foundations and applications of Aeroacoustics, which have enabled dramatic reductions in the noise of aircraft and submarines he was awarded the Sir Frank Whittle Medal by the Royal Academy of Engineering^[6] in 2002.^[10]

References

1. 1 2 3 "FFOWCS WILLIAMS, Prof. John Eirwyn" (Who's Who 2013, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2013; online edn, Oxford University Press). (subscription required)
2. ↑ John Ffowcs Williams at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
3. ↑ Williams, J. E. F. (1961). "Noise from Convected Turbulence". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 33 (11): 1675. doi:10.1121/1.1936718. 
4. ↑ Furber, Stephen Byram (1979). Is the Weis-Fogh principle exploitable in turbomachines? (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. 
5. ↑ Furber, S. B.; Williams, J. E. F. (1979). "Is the Weis-Fogh principle exploitable in turbomachinery?". Journal of Fluid Mechanics. 94 (3): 519. doi:10.1017/S0022112079001166. 
6. 1 2 3 "List of Fellows". 
7. ↑ "Emmanuel College Fellows". Archived from the original on 17 March 2013. 
8. ↑ "Original Paper on the FW-H Equation" (PDF). 
9. ↑ "Prix et médailles de la SFA, Médaille Étrangère". 
10. ↑ "Through the sound barrier without a boom?". The Royal Academy of Engineering. 17 May 2002.