William Rede Hawthorne

After the war he returned to America as Associate Professor of Engineering at MIT and was appointed the George Westinghouse Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the age of 35.

In 1951, he returned to Cambridge as the first Hopkinson and ICI Professor of Thermodynamics. Will Hawthorne's most outstanding work was in the understanding of loss mechanisms in turbomachinery, and during his time as Head of Department he and Professor John Horlock (later Vice-Chancellor of the Open University) established the Turbomachinery Laboratory.