Sir Bennett Melvill Jones, CBE AFC FRS (28 January 1887 – 31 October 1975) was Francis Mond Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Cambridge from 1919 to 1952.
He was the eldest of the three children of Benedict Jones, a barrister, and Henrietta Cornelia Melvill, the South African widow of George William Bennett.
In March 1919 Jones returned to Cambridge as a fellow of Emmanuel College and a member of staff of the Engineering Department.
[3] At Cambridge the Air Ministry provided aircraft and flying facilities to develop a very successful school of aviation research.
The aspect of Jones's paper that most shocked the designers of the time was his plot of the horse power required versus velocity, for an actual and an ideal plane.
When Jones finished his presentation, a member of the audience described the results as being of the same level of importance as the Carnot cycle in thermodynamics.
In 1943 he moved to the Ministry of Aircraft Production and became chairman of the Aeronautical Research Committee (later Council) until 1946[3] In 1946 he resumed his work on drag.