Leslie Baynes
(1902 – 1989). Attended Gresham’s from 1912 to 1914 (Old School House).
- Baynes was an aeronautical engineer. He redesigned the Short Sunderland flying boat, as well as sailplanes, heavy lift transport aircraft, hydrofoils and swivel turbines for vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.
- His most important achievement was his pioneering work in the field of variable geometry (“swing-wing”) technology.
Sir Christopher Cockerell CBE FRS
(1910 – 1999). Attended Gresham’s from 1924 to 1928 (Woodlands)
- An English engineer who was most well known as the inventor of the hovercraft, he had built a working model and filed his first patent for the hovercraft by 1955.
- He received the Howard N. Potts Medal in 1965, was made a CBE in 1966, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1967.
- In 1969 he was knighted for his services to engineering.
Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin OM KBE PRS
(1914 – 1998), a British physiologist and biophysicist, attended Gresham’s from 1927 to 1932 (Howson’s).
- Alan Lloyd Hodgkin shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Andrew Huxley and John Eccles; this is awarded annually for outstanding discoveries in the fields of life sciences and medicine.
- The prize was awarded “for their discoveries concerning the ionic mechanisms involved in excitation and inhibition in the peripheral and central portions of the nerve cell membrane”.
- He was knighted (KBE) in 1972 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1973.
Professor David Keith-Lucas CBE
(1911 – 1997). Attended Gresham’s from 1924 to 1929 (Howson’s).
- Prof Keith-Lucas was a distinguished aeronautical engineer and Professor of Aircraft Design at Cranfield Institute of Technology.
Henry Snaith FRS
Attended Gresham’s from 1989 to 1996 (Kenwyn/Tallis).
- Henry Snaith is a Professor in Physics in the Clarendon Laboratory at the University of Oxford.
- He has pioneered the development of hybrid materials for energy and photovoltaics. His work has attracted an academic and industrial following, propelled by the prospect of delivering a higher efficiency photovoltaic technology at a lower cost.
- Professor Henry Snaith was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2015.
Sir Martin Wood CBE FRS
Attended Gresham’s from 1940 to 1945 (Kenwyn/Woodlands).
- Engineer – Co-founder of Oxford Instruments, one of the first spin-out companies from the University of Oxford and still one of the most successful.
- From 1955 to 1969, he was a Senior Research Officer at the Clarendon Laboratory at the University of Oxford. He used the knowledge he acquired on high field magnets to form Oxford Instruments.
- Martin Wood was knighted in 1986, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1987, and has received honorary degrees in eight British universities.