Richard Varvill
Richard Antony Varvill is a British engineer, famous as the former Chief Designer at Reaction Engines Limited.
Early life
He was born in Hammersmith in west London. He is the son of Mark Varvill, a naval architect, and Elizabeth Agar, and has a younger sister. His great-great-great-great grandfather on his mother's side is Hucks Gibbs, 1st Baron Aldenham.He was educated at Belmont Preparatory School at Holmbury St Mary in the Surrey Hills AONB, then Bryanston School in Dorset. He read Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bristol, where he did an undergraduate apprenticeship at Rolls-Royce. Reaction Engines offered an annual prize at the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Bristol.
Career
Rolls-Royce
He started his career with Rolls-Royce Military Engine Division, in the Advanced Projects division. He worked on preliminary ideas for what could have become the RB545 air-breathing rocket engine for HOTOL.Reaction Engines
He co-founded Reaction Engines in 1989.At Reaction Engines, he was working on the successor to the RB545, SABRE (rocket engine). On 22 May 2014 he appeared in an edition of Horizon, called The £10 Million Challenge.