David Gordon Wilson

rdf:langString David Gordon Wilson

rdf:langString David Gordon Wilson (11 February 1928 – 2 May 2019) was a British-born engineer who served as a professor of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States. Born in Warwickshire, England, Wilson went to the US on a post-doctoral fellowship in 1955. He returned to Britain in 1957 to work in the gas-turbine industry. He taught engineering in Nigeria from 1958 to 1960. He started a branch of a US company in London and in 1961 was moved to the US. In 1966 he joined the MIT faculty and taught engineering design, wrote two textbooks on his specialty gas-turbine design with co-authors and also pursued a long-standing interest into human-powered transport, coauthoring Bicycling Science. He is credited, along with , with starting the modern recumbent bicycle movement in the US. In 1980, Wilson and Richard Forrestall developed a recumbent bicycle, the Avatar 2000. In 1982, Tim Gartside (Australia) rode a fully faired version as the Avatar Bluebell (UK) in a US event to a world record of 51.9 mph for 200 metres with a flying start. Wilson held more than 60 patents; in 1982, he told the Boston Globe, "It’s a bit of a pain that all I’m known for is the bike. I’m very keen on some of the other things I do." He was also active in environmental causes, proposing a forerunner to the carbon tax in 1973, and leading a group that called for a smoking ban in public places. In 2001, Wilson and Bruce co-founded Wilson TurboPower to commercialise two energy technologies developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)—the Wilson Heat Exchanger, for which the company received $500,000 in funding from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative in 2008, and the Wilson Microturbine, which was described as a "high-performance 300 kW microturbine [that] will dramatically improve energy economics by producing over 50% electrical efficiency." In 2010, the company changed its name and its focus, becoming the Wilson Solarpower Corporation. Wilson lived in Winchester, Massachusetts with his second wife, Ellen.