Arthur Roderick Collar

Arthur Roderick Collar CBE FRS FREng (22 February 1908 – 12 February 1986) was an English scientist and engineer who made significant contributions in the areas of aeroelasticity, matrix theory and its applications in engineering dynamics.

Early life and education Arthur Roderick Collar was born in West Ealing, England, on 22 February 1908, the son of Arthur Collar, owner of a firm of ironmongers and builders' merchants, and Louise Gann. He grew up in West Ealing and, from age five, in Whitstable. He attended the local board school and then spent eight years as a scholarship student at the Simon Langton School in Canterbury, where he won the school's highest award, the Payne Smith Medal and Prize, and excelled in mathematics, science, music, and sport. An accident during a school football match resulted in the lifelong loss of vision in his right eye. He then attended Emmanuel College, Cambridge, also on scholarship, from 1926 to 1929, where he studied both mathematics and physics.

Career After graduating from Cambridge, Collar joining the Aerodynamics Department at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, where he worked on propellers, airship dynamics, wind-tunnel design, and especially on flutter and matrix analysis. "It is for his research on the application of matrices to the solution of differential equations and dynamical problems", wrote R.E.D. Bishop in an account of Collar's life, "that Collar's period at N.P.L. Is best remembered." Collar worked on these challenges in collaboration with Robert Alexander Frazer and William Jolly Duncan. "The collaboration between these three", according to Bishop, "became so close that eventually separate attributions became virtually impossible to make."

He also wrote A Criterion for the Prevention of Spring-Tab Flutter, published by the Aeronautical Research Council. His book Matrices and Engineering Dynamics, written with A. Simpson, was published posthumously.

Collar published 23 papers in the R & M Series, and his paper "The expanding domain of aeroelasticity" was described as "'a chart and a compass' for all future aeroelastic work".

Honours and awards Collar and D. H. Williams jointly won the R38 Memorial Prize of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1932 when he was 24. He won the George Taylor Gold Medal in 1947, the Orville Wright Prize in 1958, and the J. E. Hodgson Prize in 1960.

Collar was named a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1944, serving as its president from 1963 to 1964. He was the first academic to become president of the society while still holding academic office. He won the society's Gold Medal in 1966 and its Hodgkin Prize in 1979. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1964 and was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1965.

Bishop notes that Collar "achieved the unusual distinction of triple Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Aeronautical Society, the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute (1980), and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (1984)."

Collar was invited to give the Lanchester Memorial Lecture in 1958. In 1971, he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science) by the University of Bath.

Personal life Collar married Winifred Margaret Charlotte (Bobbie) Moorman in June 1934. They had two sons, Martin and Nigel. Bobbie died in 1986.

Collar, according to Bishop, "was an active member of the Church of England, who could be described accurately as gentle but tough. His was essentially a Christian outlook that stood him in particularly good stead in times of difficulty. In short, he was a born leader, though he was by no means instrusive." He also describes Collar as "a very entertaining raconteur....In general conversation...there was rarely a dull moment and he had a great fund of quotations, particularly from W. S. Gilbert." Also, "he was an excellent speaker with an enviable gift of spontaneity." His colleagues, furthermore, credited Collar with helping them to write better English.

Bishop notes that Collar's outside interests "were both substantial and numerous", including "games and puzzles, reading, poetry, music and....watching tennis, football (of both varieties) and cricket."