C. N. H. Lock

Christopher Noel Hunter Lock (21 December 1894 – 27 March 1949) was a British aerodynamicist, after whom the Lock number is named.

Biography Lock was born at Herschel House, Cambridge, the youngest son of John Bascombe Lock (18 March 1849 – 8 September 1921) who was bursar of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and Emily née Baily. where he was the only b* wrangler of 1917. He took his BA in 1917, won a Smith's Prize in 1919, and became a fellow of Caius College in 1920. He conducted wide-ranging experiments, including on autogyros, and became an authority on airscrews. He developed the pitot-traverse method for measuring profile drag, and investigated the effect of sweepback at high Mach numbers. He was a member of various committees of the Aeronautical Research Council. They had two sons, Robert Christopher (Robin) Lock (14 August 1925 – 19 March 1992) and John Michael Lock (25 October 1926 – 2 March 2002), who were both research students at Gonville & Caius.