Sir Ben Lockspeiser, KCB, FRS,[1] MIMechE, FRAeS (9 March 1891 – 18 October 1990) was a British scientific administrator and the first President of CERN.

[3] When the First World War began Lockspeiser immediately enlisted with the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), and sailed for Gallipoli as a private in 1915.

[1] He was demobilized in 1919 and, back in England, gained entry to the armaments and aerodynamics section of the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough.

He was to have a big influence on major projects, including the Festival of Britain in 1951; the National Lending Library for Science and Technology in 1952;[5] Bernard Lovell's Jodrell Bank radio telescope in 1954; and the creation of CERN,[6] of which he was the first president in 1955–7.

[1] Lockspeiser retired in 1956, and then joined the boards of several companies, including Tube Investments, Staveley, H R Ricardo & Warburg's Bank; in each case he was a scientific consultant, “a pleasant role after the stresses of his official career, especially in the war years, and he enjoyed encouraging his new business colleagues in matters concerning research and development.”[1] In the 1950s, Lockspeiser's name had appeared quite often in the press, as his views on a wide range of topics were publicised.

They ranged from prevention of waste[8][9] to the future of airfields[10] and from a cross between a car and a helicopter-like plane[11] to forecasting that offices would be equipped with infallible electronic machines, which would foreshadow “the redundancy of much of our present day clerical labour”.

[12] He also joined an appeal to the Home Secretary (Gwilym Lloyd George), with Benjamin Britten, John Masefield and others, to abolish hanging.