Edward Neville da Costa Andrade, 1887-1971

Edward Neville da Costa Andrade, who, in over 60 years of research added greatly to our knowledge of the flow of liquids and solids, died in London at the age of 83 on 6 June 1971. He was born, in London, on 27 December 1887, the second son of Henry da Costa Andrade and Amy Eliza (née Davis). Despite his Portuguese name—for the family of Andrade came from Portugal to England during the Napoleonic era and included among its ancestors the Portuguese statesman, the Marquess of Pombal—Andrade was nevertheless a Londoner through and through. In 1897 he went to St Dunstan’s College, Catford, a secondary school for which he retained a lifelong affection, later becoming one of its Governors. Under the headmastership of Mr C. M. Stuart, who had earlier been a research scientist, St Dunstan’s was one of the first schools in the country to have a science laboratory and to introduce practical work into the science course. Andrade was a bright and hard-working pupil, interested in both science and literature, and in 1905 he went straight from school with a scholarship to study under F. T. Trouton at University College London, where he gained first-class honours in physics in 1907. He stayed on to do research and chose to work on the flow of solid metals such as lead under constant stress, a subject to which he was to return time and time again and which held its fascination for him even in his final researches, over sixty years later. His first paper, published in theProceedings of the Society in 1910, ‘On the viscous flow in metals, and allied phenomena’, was a landmark both for Andrade himself and for the science of the mechanical properties of matter.