A foreword in honour of John Stollery, the Journal’s eminent past Editor-in-Chief, whose final published paper appears in this issue

I note, with a mixture of pleasure and sadness, that this issue contains the article, A Simple Method for Drag Estimation for Wedge-Like Fairings in Hypersonic Flow, naming the late John Stollery CBE HonFRAeS as one of its authors. John, who passed away in 2013, will be well-known to many readers, having been one of the ‘giants’ on whose shoulders we stand. He was President of the Society in 1987/88 and Editor-in-Chief of this Journal from 1996 to 2006. John made many significant contributions to aerodynamics and trained a remarkable number of its leading figures in the UK and abroad. Curious to find out more about John’s involvement with this work, I contacted the article’s authors who explained that his contribution had been considerable: “John initiated the research in the months before he was diagnosed with cancer for the second time. He designed the experiment, had the models manufactured and selected Abhinav Kshitij to undertake the study as his MSc student.” When John became hospitalised, he asked Simon Prince to take over the supervision. It then took some additional time to complete the work by adding a subsequent CFD study which was performed by Fernandez de la Puente Ricon. Thus, this article now marks John Stollery’s last scientific contribution and I am truly delighted and touched that we can publish it in The Aeronautical Journal.