Eric Mansfield obituary

My father, Eric Mansfield, who has died aged 93, was an aeronautical engineer who won the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1994, "for his many fundamental and analytical contributions to our knowledge of advanced aeronautical structures, and more recently to the biological sciences".

He was born in Croydon, Surrey, younger of two children of Grace (nee Pfundt) and Harold Mansfield. Within a year of Eric's birth, his mother died. His father earned a living during the summer as a guide to travellers visiting mainland Europe; throughout the rest of the year, he toured the UK giving illustrated talks about his earlier foreign adventures, particularly in Canada (helping to map the Yukon boundary, working with "Buffalo" Bill Cody, joining the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, shooting the rapids, fur-trapping). Apart from leaving a garret for himself, he let out his home and used the income to fund the education of his children, Eric and Grace. Their childhood involved staying with various aunts when not at boarding school.