Known aerodynamicists?

[GrauGeist]

I've put some names out there but didn't want to hog the thread.

Still haven't seen anyone suggest Jack Northrop, so there it is.

 

[fannum]

Interesting. This is the first I have heard of him relative to gas turbine development.

"Ægidius Elling - Wikipedia" gives some of the basics.

Thank you for digging him out.
There is almost always an exception to any use of first, fastest, highest, or any superlative.
I avoid them whenever possible ... they're usually only useful in boozy bar bets and political campaign claims.

bye, the sit editing function seems to have gone wonky

 

[ThomasP]

weird <eerie music>

 

[Aeroweanie]

As to WWII era aerodynamicists, I would list:
Ed Horkey (NAA)
Irv Ashkenas (NAA)
Ed Schmued (NAA)
Bill Sears (Northrop)
Alexander Kartveli (Republic)
Sydney Camm (Hawker)
Kelly Johnson (Lockheed)
Irv Culver (Lockheed)
Ed Wells (Boeing)
George Schairer (Consolidated and Boeing)
Bev Shenstone (Supermarine)
Joe Smith (Supermarine)
Kurt Tank (Focke Wulf)
Hans Multhopp (Focke Wulf)
Sighard Hoerner (Fieseler, Junkers and Messerschmitt)
Siegfried Günter (Junkers)
Robert Lusser (Messerschmitt and Heinkel)
Art Raymond (Douglas Santa Monica)
Ed Heinemann (Douglas El Segundo)
A.M.O. Smith (Douglas El Segundo)
Ludwig Bölkow (Messerschmitt)
Alexander Lippisch (Messerschmitt)
Gustav Lachmann (Handley Page)
Adolf Busemann (AVA)
Dietrich Küchemann (AVA)
Johanna Weber (AVA)
Albert Betz (AVA)
Andrei Tupolev (Tupolev)
Alexander Yakovlev (Yakovlev)
Artem Mikoyan (MiG)
Mikhail Gurevich (MiG)
Jiro Horikoshi (Mitsubishi)
Marcel Bloch (Bloch)
Bob Hall (Grumman)
Hideo Itokawa (Nakajima)
Rex Beisel (Vought)
Arthur Gouge (Shorts)
Peyton Magruder (Martin)
Sergey Ilyushin (Ilyushin)
Isaac Laddon (Consolidated)
Roy Chadwick (Avro)
Roberto Longhi (Reggiane)
G.R. Volkert (Handley Page)
Robert Woods (Bell)
Semyon Lavochkin (Lavochkin)
Celestino Rosatelli (Fiat)
George Carter (Gloster)
Rex Pierson (Vickers)
Takeo Doi (Kawasaki)
Don Berlin (Curtiss and GM)
Bob Withington (Boeing)
Vic Ganzer (NACA and Boeing)
Dick Hutton (Grumman)
Gordon Israel (Grumman)
Marcel Riffard (Caudron and Rateau)
Teddy Petter (Westland)
Geoffery de Havilland (de Havilland)
James McDonnell (Martin and McDonnell)
Nicolas Payen (Payen)
Zygmunt Puławski (PZL)
Wsiewołod Jakimiuk (PZL, SNCASE and de Havilland)
Wieslaw Stepniewski (de Havilland)
Jerzy Dąbrowski (PZL)
H.B. Squire (RAE)
A.D. Young (RAE)
W.A. Mair (RAE)
John Zalovcik (NACA)
Lawrence Clousing (NACA)
Welko Gasich (NACA)
Abe Silverstein (NACA)
James Nissen (NACA)
Herbert Hoover (NACA)
Howard Matthews (NACA)
Itiro Tani (Tokyo Imperial Univ)
Theodore von Kármán (Caltech)
Qian Xuesen (Caltech)
Tatsuo Hasegawa (Tachikawa)
Yasuzu Naito (Nakajima)
Hideki Itokawa (Nakajima)
Tsutomu Fujino (Mitsubishi)

 

[swampyankee]

I'd seen a PBS documentary on space flight years ago. It demonstrated, thru animation, an artillerist calculated velocity and angle that would be needed to achieve orbit. The cannon ball, though falling, wouldn't hit the ground. Would that have been this officer?
This is also the secret of flight. Throw yourself at the ground and miss.

Isaac Newton? One of hist thought experiments involved a cannon with arbitrarily high muzzle velocity.

 

[z42]

Soviets also claimed to have invented the telephone around 20 years before Alexander G. Bell, and the automobile and just about everything else newer than animal skin clothing.

A number of other countries have exaggerated their own inventiveness but I don't think anybody claimed to have invented practically everything like the Soviets did in the 1920s thru 50s. They toned things down considerably in later years.

My father worked in the telecom industry in the 1990'ies, and was doing some projects in Russia. Talking with them about the history of radio communications, they hadn't heard about Marconi. Turned out in school they had been taught it was some Russian guy.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Remember that winglets, spoilers, turbulators, laminar flow, variable geometry among other techniques were developed for or extensively tested and proven on sailplanes before being commonly adopted for all aircraft.

Hey Fan, how did they power variable-geometry wings on sailplanes? Was this aux power, or regulated by slipstream, or what?

I've never heard this before, now I've got a bug in my ear and you're to blame so dig it out!

 

[J.D.]

Henri-Marie Coanda
Mikhail Simonov

 

[Dimlee]

My father worked in the telecom industry in the 1990'ies, and was doing some projects in Russia. Talking with them about the history of radio communications, they hadn't heard about Marconi. Turned out in school they had been taught it was some Russian guy.

Yes, Alexander Popov was named the "father of radio" in the Soviet literature. Very few knew Marconi: radio enthusiasts and engineers with access to foreign literature and some in civil aviation and merchant marine.
On the merchant vessels, "marconi" was a popular nickname for the radio operator. I never heard anyone calling marine radio operators "popov", by the way.
Ah, and there was a Soviet movie about Popov where Marconi was portrayed as a foreign evil scientist who stole Popov's invention...

Alexander Popov (film) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[spicmart]

Anyone know soemthing about Gotthold Matthias, aerodynamicist at Focke Wulf?

 

[SaparotRob]

I just learned that he was an aerodynamicist at Focke Wulf.

 

[Reluctant Poster]

The industrial gas turbine pre dates WW I.
The theory was there, the execution was not.
They could not recover enough power from the turbine to turn the compressor fast enough to keep the engine running.
They could spin the test rigs fast enough to start with external power but they could not keep running on their own. Being industrial machines they also weighed huge amounts for designed power. The idea was power fans/compressors for steel making or other industries and replace steam engines and boilers.
This is also why some gov officials didn't want to fund research, the only examples they had seen/read about weighed well over 10lbs per hp. Getting a working engine to weight 1/10th of that was sticking point.

A stepping stone to the industrial gas turbine was the fascinating Velox boiler

Velox boiler - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Brown Boveri was the pioneer of practical gas turbines as well as marine turbochargers (a market it still dominates)

 

[z42]

A stepping stone to the industrial gas turbine was the fascinating Velox boiler

Velox boiler - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Brown Boveri was the pioneer of practical gas turbines as well as marine turbochargers (a market it still dominates)

IIRC the RN evaluated the Velox boiler (mid 1930'ies?), promising an order of magnitude better power density than the Admiralty pattern three drum boiler. Wasn't adopted though.

 

[Aeroweanie]

John Roncz. One of the greatest, but alas one who will never get the recognition he deserves. He worked on Voyager, Pond Racer, the RV-9 has his aerofoil and plenty more.
After he passed a few month back, I contacted EAA to ask what was being done to celebrate his life. To my surprise they did nothing.

There is a forum at AirVenture about him by one of his collegues.

How to Think Like John Roncz - Details

events.rdmobile.com

I'll be there.

I first met John in 1983 when I wrote him, asking some questions about airfoil design. He ended up making the models for a wind tunnel test I did in 1985 and I got to know him during trips to inspect the models.

After he got a new contract from Beech in 1985 that funded an assistant, I went to work for John and worked for him for three years (1986-1989). In that time, we taught each other a lot. He taught me a lot of airfoil design technique and I taught him things like how right-handed coordinate systems work, what a force couple is and how to run CFD codes like ISES and VSAERO. Together, we did the wing design of the Scaled ATTT, Scaled Triumph, Rutan Catbird, Scaled Ares, Scaled Pond Racer, Keller Prospector, Melmoth 2 and Eagle X-TS. Plus, we designed the Voyager propellers and did drag reduction work on the Starship. In the time, I also designed the inlets for Triumph, Pond Racer and Ares.

After I left, we stayed in touch. Many years later, in 2022, I contracted him to help me redesign the wing of WK2. I think its the last project he did before he died.

 

[GregP]

Soviets also claimed to have invented the telephone around 20 years before Alexander G. Bell, and the automobile and just about everything else newer than animal skin clothing.

A number of other countries have exaggerated their own inventiveness but I don't think anybody claimed to have invented practically everything like the Soviets did in the 1920s thru 50s. They toned things down considerably in later years.

You mean they invented modesty after bragging about Soviet accomplishemnts?

 

[GrauGeist]

You mean they invented modesty after bragging about Soviet accomplishemnts?

They also invented falling out of windows as a medical condition.

 

[bf109xxl]

As to WWII era aerodynamicists, I would list:
...
Andrei Tupolev (Tupolev)

Alexander Yakovlev (Yakovlev)
Artem Mikoyan (MiG)
Mikhail Gurevich (MiG)
...
Sergey Ilyushin (Ilyushin)
...
Semyon Lavochkin (Lavochkin)

...
Mikhail Simonov

The list completely erroneously includes the names of Soviet general designers. They were usually not specialists in aerodynamics. In Soviet design bureaus there were departments of general design, where aerodynamic schemes were proposed, and departments of aerodynamics, where calculations and optimization of these schemes were carried out. Sometimes the aerodynamics department could influence the choice of scheme or even offer its own variant. In the 1930s in the USSR, in general, ALL aircraft design was performed at the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI), where the same aerodynamicists worked for different design groups. In 1939 the design work was reorganized, leaving TsAGI only general and research issues, and transferring all design to separate experimental design bureaus.
Of all the Soviet designers listed, perhaps only Mikhail Gurevich had any experience as an aerodynamicist, but I'm not entirely sure about that.
Mikhail Simonov was a specialist in control systems.
Artem Mikoyan was more of an official than a designer.
Semyon Lavochkin was more of a specialist in structural strength.
Each experimental design bureau had its own chief aerodynamicist, for example, at Myasishchev in the 1950s and at Sukhoi in the 1960s it was Isaac Baslavsky, at Tupolev - Alexander Sterlin, then - Georgy Cheremukhin, and in later times almost every family of machines had its own chief aerodynamicist (for example, Moisey Tuger in Tu-95/-142), in Ilyushin Design Bureau since the late 1970s (General Designer Novozhilov) - Igor Vasin (I do not know who was before him), Lavochkin - Naum Heifets, and Yakovlev - Georgy Pulkhrov (1950-1960s).
Such outstanding aerodynamicists as Ivan Ostoslavsky, Vladmir Struminsky, Sergey Khristianovich, Yakov Serebriysky, Peter Krasilshchikov and many others who were directly involved both in the choice of the scheme of new airplanes and in the process of improving aerodynamics (in addition to fundamental research) worked in TsAGI.
To consider all airplane designers as aerodynamicists (even purely applied ones) is a big mistake.

 

[Dimlee]

The list completely erroneously includes the names of Soviet general designers. They were usually not specialists in aerodynamics. In Soviet design bureaus there were departments of general design, where aerodynamic schemes were proposed, and departments of aerodynamics, where calculations and optimization of these schemes were carried out. Sometimes the aerodynamics department could influence the choice of scheme or even offer its own variant. In the 1930s in the USSR, in general, ALL aircraft design was performed at the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI), where the same aerodynamicists worked for different design groups. In 1939 the design work was reorganized, leaving TsAGI only general and research issues, and transferring all design to separate experimental design bureaus.
Of all the Soviet designers listed, perhaps only Mikhail Gurevich had any experience as an aerodynamicist, but I'm not entirely sure about that.
Mikhail Simonov was a specialist in control systems.
Artem Mikoyan was more of an official than a designer.
Semyon Lavochkin was more of a specialist in structural strength.
Each experimental design bureau had its own chief aerodynamicist, for example, at Myasishchev in the 1950s and at Sukhoi in the 1960s it was Isaac Baslavsky, at Tupolev - Alexander Sterlin, then - Georgy Cheremukhin, and in later times almost every family of machines had its own chief aerodynamicist (for example, Moisey Tuger in Tu-95/-142), in Ilyushin Design Bureau since the late 1970s (General Designer Novozhilov) - Igor Vasin (I do not know who was before him), Lavochkin - Naum Heifets, and Yakovlev - Georgy Pulkhrov (1950-1960s).
Such outstanding aerodynamicists as Ivan Ostoslavsky, Vladmir Struminsky, Sergey Khristianovich, Yakov Serebriysky, Peter Krasilshchikov and many others who were directly involved both in the choice of the scheme of new airplanes and in the process of improving aerodynamics (in addition to fundamental research) worked in TsAGI.
To consider all airplane designers as aerodynamicists (even purely applied ones) is a big mistake.

This is a good explanation.
Probably, only Antonov can be considered as the "aerodynamicist" among the chief designers in the USSR.
Robert Bartini, maybe?

 

[spicmart]

Apart from Kurt Tank, the names of Rudolf Blaser and Ernst Nipp are somewhat known.
One Gotthold Matthias was the aerodynamicst responsible at least for the design of the Ta 154.
Not having read of his name anywhere else other than in Dietmar Herrman's Ta 154 book.
One would imagine that a such important position in one of the most well-known aviation companies in Nazi-Germany should be more often mentioned.

 

[bf109xxl]

This is a good explanation.
Probably, only Antonov can be considered as the "aerodynamicist" among the chief designers in the USSR.
Robert Bartini, maybe?

Roberto Oros di Bartini definitely has merits in the field of aerodynamics - AFAIK, he studied supersonic wing profiles in order to minimize the displacement of the pressure focus. IIRC, he called them "R" type profiles. But Bartini's name is not known as widely as other Soviet designers - he headed the experimental design bureau for a very short time, and some of his airplanes were named after other designers (for example, the Stal-7, better known as the DB-240/Er-2).
Antonov's merits in the field of aerodynamics are rather unknown to me - perhaps I did not pay enough attention to this side of his work. I can hardly recall anything fundamentally new in terms of aerodynamics in his designs - even the An-72 was clearly a response to the AMST program and took off much later than the YC-14.