Charles Osmond Frederick is a British engineer who worked on interaction of rails and wheels at the British Railway Technical Centre, Derby.
Together with P.J. Armstrong he developed the Armstrong-Frederick plasticity models, which are applied in the theory of inelastic deformations. In the early 60's, he investigated stress phenomena in nuclear fuel elements for the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Since around 1970, he was employed by the research centre of British Rail.
In 2006, patent-spotters rediscovered a patent attributed in 1973 to the British Railways Board on a nuclear driven space vehicle, dubbed the British Rail flying saucer. The patent was based on work performed by Frederick, which originally was directed towards a lifting platform and finally culminated in a nuclear fusion powered passenger craft for interplanetary travel.