Structures

James Edward Gordon was born in 1913. He took a degree in naval architecture at Glasgow University and worked in wood and steel shipyards. On the outbreak of the Second World War he moved to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, where he worked on wooden aircraft, plastics and unorthodox materials. He designed the sailing rescue dinghies carried at one time by most bomber aircraft. He later became head of the plastic structures sections at Farnborough and developed a method of construction in reinforced plastics which is now used for a number of purpose in aircraft and rockets.

For several years he worked in industry on the strength of glass and the growth of strong ‘whisker’ crystals. In 1962 he returned to government service as superintendent of an experimental branch at Waltham Abbey concerned with research and development of entirely new structural materials. He was Industrial Fellow Commoner at Churchill College, Cambridge, and became Professor of Materials Technology at the University of Reading, where he was later Professor Emeritus. He was awarded the British Silver Medal of the Royal Aeronautical Society and the Griffith Medal of the Materials Science Club. His book, Structures or Why Things Don’t Fall Down, is also published.

Professor Gordon died in 1998. The Times wrote of him that he was ‘one of the founders of materials science’ and that he wrote ‘two books of outstanding literary quality … at once entertaining and informative, providing absorbing interest for both expert and student’.

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