Geoff Wilde

Geoffrey Light Wilde OBE (21 May 1917 – 18 August 2007) was a British engineer employed by Rolls-Royce Limited.

Geoffrey Light Wilde was born in Plumstead, London.

He was first educated in France, where his father Alfred was working. His father died when he was 12. He would later move to Leamington and attend Warwick School. He was then apprenticed to the Daimler Company in Coventry. Later he gained an HNC in Mechanical Engineering from Coventry Technical College.

In 1938 he joined Rolls-Royce Limited in Derby where he did much of the design work for their compressors. While working on test beds for the Merlin engines, he proposed a variable-speed supercharger, to increase the performance at altitude, that was subsequently incorporated in the Merlin XX. He helped Stanley Hooker to design and develop the Merlin two-stage supercharger used in the Merlin 60-series.

Early jet engines were being developed at Lutterworth in Leicestershire, which were having problems with surging. He tested the centrifugal compressor at Derby, and found a solution to the difficulties of surging.

In 1943, he was put in charge of the supercharger and compressor department at Derby.

In 1947, he was put in charge of the design and development of the AJ65 Avon axial-flow jet engine. It had had difficulties with compressor blades breaking. He produced solutions for the design of the multi-stage compressor of the Avon, one of R-R's most successful jet engines.

He later oversaw the development of the compressor for the Conway, the world's first turbofan (by-pass) engine.