Theodore von Kármán, was a Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer, and physicist who was active primarily in the fields of aeronautics and astronautics. He was responsible for many key advances in aerodynamics, notably on supersonic and hypersonic airflow characterization, and the widely recognized threshold of outer space is named the "Kármán line" based on his work. He is regarded as an outstanding aerodynamic theoretician of the 20th century.
Qian Xuesen, or Hsue-Shen Tsien, was a Chinese mathematician, cyberneticist, aerospace engineer, and physicist who made significant contributions to the field of aerodynamics and established engineering cybernetics. Recruited from MIT, he joined Theodore von Kármán's group at Caltech.
Ludwig Prandtl was a German fluid dynamicist, physicist and aerospace scientist. He was a pioneer in the development of rigorous systematic mathematical analyses which he used for underlying the science of aerodynamics, which have come to form the basis of the applied science of aeronautical engineering. In the 1920s he developed the mathematical basis for the fundamental principles of subsonic aerodynamics in particular; and in general up to and including transonic velocities. His studies identified the boundary layer, thin-airfoils, and lifting-line theories. The Prandtl number was named after him.
Satish Dhawan was an Indian mathematician and aerospace engineer, widely regarded as the father of experimental fluid dynamics research in India. Born in Srinagar, Dhawan was educated in India and further on in United States. Dhawan was one of the most eminent researchers in the field of turbulence and boundary layers, leading the successful and indigenous development of the Indian space programme. He succeeded M. G. K. Menon, as the third chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in 1972.
Roddam Narasimha FRS was an Indian aerospace scientist and fluid dynamicist. He was a professor of Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science (1962–1999), director of the National Aerospace Laboratories (1984–1993) and the chairman of the Engineering Mechanics Unit at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. He was the DST Year-of-Science Chair Professor at JNCASR and concurrently held the Pratt & Whitney Chair in Science and Engineering at the University of Hyderabad. Narasimha was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian award, in 2013. for his contributions to advance India's aerospace technology.
Albert Betz was a German physicist and a pioneer of wind turbine technology.
Hans Wolfgang Liepmann was an American fluid dynamicist, aerospace scientist and emeritus Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology.
The Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT), was a research institute created in 1926, at first specializing in aeronautics research. In 1930, Hungarian scientist Theodore von Kármán accepted the directorship of the lab and emigrated to the United States. Under his leadership, work on rockets began there in 1936. GALCIT was the first—and from 1936 to 1940 the only—university-based rocket research center. Based on GALCIT's JATO project at the time, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was established under a contract with the United States Army in November 1943.
Satya Atluri is an American engineer, educator, researcher and scientist in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering and computational sciences, who is currently the Presidential Chair & University Distinguished Professor at Texas Tech University. Since 1966, he made fundamental contributions to the development of finite element methods, boundary element methods, Meshless Local Petrov-Galerkin (MLPG) methods, Fragile Points Methods (FPM), Local Variational Iteration Methods, for general problems of engineering, solid mechanics, fluid dynamics, heat transfer, flexoelectricity, ferromagnetics, gradient and nonlocal theories, nonlinear dynamics, shell theories, micromechanics of materials, structural integrity and damage tolerance, Orbital mechanics, Astrodynamics, etc.
H. Norman Abramson is an American engineer, scientist, retired Executive Vice President of the Southwest Research Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, and former manager and principal investigator in several NAE and NRC research projects.
William Rees Sears was an aeronautical engineer and educator who worked at Caltech, Northrop Aircraft, Cornell University, and the University of Arizona. He was an editor of the Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences from 1955 to 1963 and the founding Editor of the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics in 1969.
Ares J. Rosakis, Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He was also the fifth Director of the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories, known as (GALCIT), and formerly known as Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, and was the Otis Booth Leadership Chair, of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science.
John Oluseun Dabiri is a Nigerian-American aeronautics engineer and the Centennial Chair Professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), with appointments in the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories (GALCIT) and Mechanical Engineering. His research focuses on unsteady fluid mechanics and flow physics, with particular emphasis on topics relevant to biology, energy, and the environment. He is best known for his research of the hydrodynamics of jellyfish propulsion and the design of a vertical-axis wind farm adapted from schooling fish. He is the director of the Biological Propulsion Laboratory, which examines fluid transport with applications in aquatic locomotion, fluid dynamic energy conversion, and cardiac flows, as well as applying theoretical methods in fluid dynamics and concepts of optimal vortex formation.
Rolf Heinrich Sabersky was professor emeritus in mechanical engineering at Caltech. He worked with luminaries throughout his career including Apollo M. O. Smith and Theodore von Kármán at Aerojet. James Van Allan sought his expertise for the development of the Ajax and Bumblebee rocket programs.
Sébastien Candel is a French physicist, Emeritus Professor of École Centrale Paris.
Guruswami Ravichandran is a professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at California Institute of Technology. He is also serving as the Otis Booth Leadership Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech. He served as the director of Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory (GALCIT) at California Institute of Technology from 2009 to 2015. He was named Fellow of the Society for Experimental Mechanics in 2010 and served as the President of the Society for Experimental Mechanics from 2015 to 2016.
Mujeeb R. Malik is a Pakistani born American aerospace engineer serving as Senior Aerodynamicist at NASA Langley Research Center. He is known for his research in boundary layer stability, laminar-turbulent transition, computational methods and aerodynamic simulations. He was the architect of CFD Vision 2030, a NASA-sponsored study to advance the state-of-the-art of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) by exploiting high performance computing and modern validation experiments.
Charles Meneveau is a French-Chilean born American fluid dynamicist, known for his work on turbulence, including turbulence modeling and computational fluid dynamics.
Morteza (Mory) Gharib is the Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Bio-Inspired Engineering at Caltech.
Walter Guido Vincenti was an American engineer who worked in the field of aeronautics, designing planes that could fly at hypersonic speed. He was elected as a member of several scientific societies, including the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and National Academy of Engineering. He won several prestigious awards, such as the Leonardo da Vinci Medal and the Daniel Guggenheim Medal.
