John Frederick Clarke

John Frederick Clarke FRS (1 May 1927 – 11 June 2013) was a professor, an aeronautical engineer, and a pilot.

John Clarke
Born
John Frederick Clarke

(1927-05-01)May 1, 1927
Warwick
DiedJune 11, 2013(2013-06-11) (aged 86)
Alma materQueen Mary College (BSc, PhD)
Known forClarke's equation
Clarke–Riley diffusion flame
Awards
Scientific career
Institutions
ThesisAn investigation of the forces on a body of revolution in non-steady motion at moderate Mach numbers (1957)
Academic advisorsN.A.V. Piercy
L.G. Whitehead
Alec David Young
Doctoral studentsAndrew McIntosh

Biography

After his schooling, he got training from Fleet Air Arm as a Navy Pilot and then from Royal Air force at Lossiemouth. He left Navy and worked few months at Armstrong Siddeley Motors, but his interest were in academics. Subsequently he quit the job and joined Queen Mary College in Aeronautical engineering course in 1949. He married Jean Gentle in 1953. His thesis advisor N.A.V. Piercy died in 1953, then he temporarily advised by L.G. Whitehead and then finally by Alec David Young. He received his PhD at Queen Mary College in 1957. He briefly worked for English Electric company from 1955 to 1957. In 1958 he joined Cranfield University as a lecturer and stayed there till 1991. After his retirement he continued to do research for a decade. His research interests were Shock waves, detonations, gas dynamics, flame theory etc.

Awards and honours

Clarke was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1982.[1] His nomination reads:

Professor Clarke is distinguished particularly for his analytical work on the gas dynamics of reacting flows. He has shown how, in the presence of solid boundaries, flows are affected by dissociation, heat conduction and by relaxation of the internal molecular modes. On flame structure he has used perturbation techniques to obtain realistic models in various geometries and has been able to show good agreement with experimental results; he has also studied explosive atmospheres under the influence of various disturbances. His work on supersonic flow has included analyses of shock structure in reacting gases as well as shockless flow with attached flame sheets. Apart from reacting gases he has worked on unsteady aerodynamics both of wing-bodies and of pipe flows.[2]

Books
  • John F. Clarke, Malcolm McChesney (1964). The dynamics of real gases. Butterworths.
  • John F. Clarke, Malcolm McChesney (1975). Dynamics of relaxing gases. Butterworths.
  • John F. Clarke (1978). Gas dynamics with relaxation effects. Reports on progress in physics, Institute of Physics.
  • John F. Clarke (1984). Quasi-steady flames on an evolving atmosphere. College of Aeronautics, Cranfield Institute of Technology.
  • E.F. Toro and John F. Clarke (Eds.) (1998). Numerical methods for wave propagation: selected contributions from the workshop held in Manchester, UK, containing the Harten memorial lecture. Springer Science & Business Media.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)

See also

References
  1. Bray, K. N. C.; Riley, N. (2014). "John Frederick Clarke 1 May 1927 – 11 June 2013". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2014.0012.
  2. "EC/1987/04: Clarke, John Frederick". London: The Royal Society. Archived from the original on 2014-08-26.
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