Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2016
Sir Henry Tizard’s work and–above all–his part in our survival in 1940–have been the subject of many memoirs since his death in 1959. The biography written by Ronald Clark at the invitation of Professor J. P. M. Tizard, Sir Henry’s eldest son, will shortly appear. This first Memorial Lecture of the Royal Aeronautical Society thus occurs when a full record of Tizard’s life is about to be made available, and there is therefore little point in the plain re-iteration of a condensed biography. Future Memorial Lecturers, as they inevitably grow more remote from personal contact with Tizard, may well choose to describe the advances of the future in those fields to which Tizard himself so notably contributed: science, defence, education and government. My purpose in this first Memorial Lecture is, therefore, to build a bridge between biography and those future fields in which Tizard’s example, although unlikely to be excelled, will be emulated and extended.