Bob Feilden, Born 1917
MECHANICAL ENGINEER
Geoffrey Bertram Robert "Bob" Feilden CBE FRS FREng FIMechE (20 February 1917 – 1 May 2004) was a mechanical engineer, and an important part of the Power Jets team that developed the first jet engine with Frank Whittle in the early 1940s. He was the son of Major Robert Feilden MC and Olive Binyon. He spent his early years in British Columbia, western Canada, as his father had ill health from being gassed in the First World War. He returned to England when he was eight, after his father died swimming in a lake in the Okanagan area. He attended Bedford School as a major scholar and went to King's College, Cambridge in 1936, where he read Mechanical Sciences and Economics. In addition to Power Jets he worked during his career with Ruston and Hornsby, Hawker Siddeley, and Davy Ashmore. He was Chair of the Committee on Engineering Design from 1961 and authored the 1963 'Report of the Feilden Committee on Engineering Design'. In 1968 he joined the British Standards Institution as Deputy Director General, in Hemel Hempstead, becoming Director General from 1970 until his retirement in 1981.
Source; This life story was archived in 2021, with acknowledgement and thanks, from the website of the Royal Society at https://royalsociety.org.