My friend Mike Owen, who has died aged 83, was a merchant navy engineer who became a world-renowned expert in the field of fluid mechanics and jet engines.
Born in Cheam, Surrey, to Charles, an electrical engineer, and Ruth Hadfield, a forewoman at an electrical company, Mike went to Epsom grammar school until he was 16, when he started a marine engineering apprenticeship with Esso in 1954, spending two years at college, two years at sea and then a final year back at college and in workshops.
Afterwards he remained with Esso, becoming a second engineer at the early age of 23 before studying mechanical engineering at King’s College, Durham (now Newcastle University), during which time he married Doreen Chapman in 1964.
Graduating with a first-class degree the following year, he then set off with Doreen for Canada, where he had landed a job as a research engineer in fluid machinery with Crippen Consultants in Vancouver, testing scale models of dams, spillways and rivers for the hydro-electric power stations that would be constructed as part of the Fraser River Project in British Columbia.
A year later he was invited by the new University of Sussex to come back home and work on a Rolls-Royce-funded project on the fluid mechanics of rotating discs. At Sussex he combined research with his love of walking the South Downs, climbing with the university club and making beer. He added a DPhil and later a DSc to his academic honours.
During 20 years at Sussex, Mike supervised many research students, grants and contracts funded by government and international gas turbine companies, becoming director of the Thermo-Fluid Mechanics Research Centre at the university.
In 1989, having further established his reputation with a two-volume book, Flow and Heat Transfer in Rotating-Disc Systems, published that year and co-authored with Ruth Rogers, he became chair of the University of Bath’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, where he wrote more than 100 journal and conference papers, plus other books.
His experimental and theoretical work centred around research on jet engines, and one of his most notable achievements was to set up the now world-renowned Centre for Rotating Flows at Bath: he became its head of school and department. He formally retired in 2003 but carried on his research at Bath and was writing scientific papers right up to his last few days.
Mike was always very fit, walking long distances and cycling up and down the hills around Bath. He enjoyed sailing and also loved to deliver a funny story with an unexpected twist at the end.
He is survived by Doreen, their daughters, Julie and Sharon, and seven grandchildren.
