Brian Launder is an engineering fluid mechanician who graduated in mechanical engineering from Imperial College London in 1961 and obtained his doctorate from MIT. Thereafter, he rejoined Imperial as Lecturer/Reader before becoming a full Professor at the University of California, Davis. In 1980, he returned to the United Kingdom to head the Thermo-Fluids Division at UMIST, where he also served two terms as Head of Department. While his principal research interest throughout has been the computational modelling of turbulent flows, he has also led many experimental studies.

Following his admission to the Royal Society, Brian’s role at UMIST widened to include environmental concerns, heading the university’s Environmental Strategy Group and becoming Regional Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research for six years. The latter role stimulated his interests in climate engineering, a field in which he has both edited and authored journal articles, as well as reports published by the Royal Society.