William Jolly Duncan was born on 26 April 1894 , the son of Robert Duncan MP, senior partner in the marine engineering firm of Ross and Duncan of Glasgow and Mary Jolly. He married Enid Meyler Baker in 1936 and had four daughters. He was educated at Allan Glen??s School, Dulwich College and University College London. He served with the Royal Army Service Corps in the First World War and then with the Aeronautical Inspection Department. He was a member of the family marine engineering firm from 1919-1926 becoming AMINA in 1920 and a partner in the firm by 1922. In 1926 he returned to aeronautics, joining the Aeronautics Department of the National Physical Laboratory. After a period on general fluid mechanics, he collaborated with RA Frazer on the problem of aircraft flutter. He became the first Head of the University College Hull??s Aeronautics Department in 1934 and then the Wakefield Professor there in 1938.
During the Second World War he joined the Royal Aircraft Establishment and worked on armaments and aerodynamics, was Head of the Air Defence Research Department at Exeter and Chief Scientist under the Ministry of Aircraft Production at Luftfahrtforschunganstalt Hermann Goring, Volkenrode, Brunswick in 1945. Duncan became Professor of Aerodynamics at Cranfield in 1945 . He became the Mechan Professor of Aeronautics and Fluid Mechanics at the University of Glasgow in 1950 . He was appointed Assessor at the Comet Accident Enquiries in 1956. He died on the 09 December 1960 . His publications include: The Principles of the Control and the Stability of Aircraft , (1952); Physical Similarity and Dimensional Analysis , (1953); with Frazer, R A and Collar, A R, Elementary Matrices , (1938); with Arnold, Edward, An Elementary Treatise on the Mechanics of Fluids , (1960).
Sources: Who's Who , (1956); The College Courant , Vol. XIII, No.26, (1961, Glasgow).
From the guide to the Papers of William Jolly Duncan, 1894-1960, Aeronautical Engineer, Mechan Professor of Aeronautics and Fluid Mechanics, University of Glasgow, Scotland, 1950, 1946-1960, (Glasgow University Archives Service)
