Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2016
I must start by thanking the Royal Aeronautical Society for the invitation to present this 27th Lanchester Memorial Lecture. It is an honour and a privilege to follow in the footsteps of the distinguished scientists and engineers who have given the first 26 lectures in this series. These lectures have included many outstanding reviews of a wide range of different topics and I am very conscious that they have set a standard that I, for my part, will find difficult to match. I hope, however, that by choosing a topic that has only been mentioned in passing in just a few of the previous lectures, I will be able to make my own distinct, individual contribution to this tribute to the memory of a man who was not only a great scientist and engineer and talented musician but who, by his writings as long ago as 1907, still carries a message for us today in 1987.