Christopher Noel Hunter Lock (21 December 1894 – 27 March 1949) was a British aerodynamicist, after whom the

Lock number In helicopter aerodynamics, the Lock number is the ratio of aerodynamic forces, which act to lift the rotor blades, to inertial forces, which act to maintain the blades in the plane of rotation. It is named after C. N. H. Lock, a British aerodyna ...

is named.

Biography

Lock was born at Herschel House, Cambridge, the youngest son of John Bascombe Lock (18 March 1849 – 8 September 1921) who was bursar of

Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Gonville and Caius College, commonly known as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348 by Edmund Gonville, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and ...

, and Emily née Baily. His brother was

Robert Heath Lock Robert Heath Lock (19 January 1879 – 26 June 1915) was an English botanist and geneticist who wrote the first English textbook on genetics. Life Robert Heath Lock was the son of John Bascombe Lock, a priest and Eton College schoolmaster who w ...

. Lock was a Scholar at

Charterhouse School Charterhouse is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school (English independent boarding school for pupils aged 13–18) in Godalming, Surrey, England. Founded by Thomas Sutton in 1611 on the site of the old Carthusian monastery in Charter ...

, and in 1912 was awarded a Major Scholarship at Gonville and Caius College, where he was the only b* wrangler of 1917. He took his BA in 1917, won a Smith's Prize in 1919, and became a fellow of Caius College in 1920. He was a member of the

Anti-Aircraft Experimental Section The Anti-Aircraft Experimental Section of the Munitions Inventions Department was an organisation set up within Lloyd George's Ministry of Munitions in early 1916. Originally based at Northholt aerodrome, in May 1916 the section moved to the Nati ...

, and in 1920 moved to the Aerodynamics Division of the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, to work on the dynamics of shells. He conducted wide-ranging experiments, including on

autogyro An autogyro (from Greek and , "self-turning"), gyroscope, gyrocopter or gyroplane, is a class of rotorcraft that uses an unpowered rotor in free autorotation to develop lift. A gyroplane "means a rotorcraft whose rotors are not engine-d ...

s, and became an authority on airscrews. From 1939 until his death, he ran the Aerodynamics Division's High Speed Research Group. He developed the pitot-traverse method for measuring

profile drag Profile or profiles may refer to: Art, entertainment and media Music * Profile (Jan Akkerman album), ''Profile'' (Jan Akkerman album), 1973 * Profile (Githead album), ''Profile'' (Githead album), 2005 * Profile (Pat Donohue album), ''Profile'' ...

, and investigated the effect of

sweepback A swept wing is a wing angled either backward or occasionally forward from its root rather than perpendicular to the fuselage. Swept wings have been flown since the pioneer days of aviation. Wing sweep at high speeds was first investigated in Ge ...

at high

Mach number The Mach number (M or Ma), often only Mach, (; ) is a dimensionless quantity in fluid dynamics representing the ratio of flow velocity past a boundary to the local speed of sound. It is named after the Austrian physicist and philosopher Erns ...

s. He was a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and the Physical Society. He was a member of various committees of the Aeronautical Research Council.

Personal life

Lock married Lilian Mary née Gillman (1886/7–7 Oct 1966, aged 79) on 26 April 1924, at

St Leonard's Church, Streatham St Leonard's Church is a Church of England parish church in the London Borough of Lambeth. It is a Grade II listed building and occupies a prominent position on the west side of Streatham High Road, at its junction with Tooting Bec Gardens and M ...

. They had two sons, Robert Christopher (Robin) Lock (14 Aug 1925–19 March 1992) and John Michael Lock (25 Oct 1926–2 March 2002), who were both research students at Gonville & Caius.

References

External links

Publications by C. N. H. Lock
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lock, C. N. H. Aerodynamicists Ballistics experts Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge 1894 births 1949 deaths People educated at Charterhouse School