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Louis Gerhardus Dunn (1908-1979) was a South African-born engineer who played a key role in the development of early American missiles and launch vehicles.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(February 2013) |
Louis Gerhardus Dunn (1908-1979) was a South African-born engineer who played a key role in the development of early American missiles and launch vehicles.
Dunn received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in aeronautical engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, CA. During that time the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at Caltech (GALCIT), a prestigious aeronautical engineering research facility, was led by Theodore von Kármán. By 1943 Dunn had joined the Caltech faculty and become a naturalized U.S. citizen.
In 1943 and 1944, von Kármán and Frank Malina, who had been doing rocket research at GALCIT, began using Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the names of their projects. [1] Malina hired Dunn to be the assistant director of JPL in 1945. Dunn took over as acting director when Malina left and was formally appointed as director in 1947. Dunn resigned from this position in 1954. William Hayward Pickering, who had been project manager for the Corporal missile under Dunn, succeeded him as JPL director.
After leaving JPL Dunn led the Atlas missile program at the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation, a predecessor of TRW. In 1963 he moved to Aerojet General, and he died at his home in Mountain Ranch, CA on August 13, 1979.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center in Pasadena, California, United States. Founded in 1936 by Caltech researchers, the laboratory is now owned and sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and administered and managed by the California Institute of Technology.
John Whiteside Parsons was an American rocket engineer, chemist, and Thelemite occultist. Associated with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Parsons was one of the principal founders of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation. He invented the first rocket engine to use a castable, composite rocket propellant, and pioneered the advancement of both liquid-fuel and solid-fuel rockets.
Theodore von Kármán, was a Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer, and physicist who worked in aeronautics and astronautics. He was responsible for crucial advances in aerodynamics characterizing supersonic and hypersonic airflow. The human-defined threshold of outer space is named the "Kármán line" in recognition of his work. Kármán is regarded as an outstanding aerodynamic theoretician of the 20th century.
Qian Xuesen, or Hsue-shen Tsien, was a Chinese aerospace engineer and cyberneticist who made significant contributions to the field of aerodynamics and established engineering cybernetics.
The WAC Corporal was the first sounding rocket developed in the United States and the first vehicle to achieve hypersonic speeds. It was an offshoot of the Corporal program, that was started by a partnership between the United States Army Ordnance Corps and the California Institute of Technology in June 1944 with the ultimate goal of developing a military ballistic missile.
Eberhardt Rechtin was an American systems engineer and respected authority in aerospace systems and systems architecture.
Frank Joseph Malina was an American aeronautical engineer and painter, known for his pioneering work in early rocketry.
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.
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.
Private was an experimental rocket developed by the California Institute of Technology on behalf of the United States Army. Tested in two different configurations, it provided the proof of concept that a fin-stabilised ballistic missile was technologically feasible, and led to the development of the Corporal ballistic missile. The Private was the first in a series of JPL rocket designs for the US Army, whose names correspond to the progression in Army enlisted ranks, leading to WAC Corporal, Corporal E, MGM-5 Corporal and finally Sergeant.
Hans G. Hornung is an emeritus C. L. "Kelly" Johnson Professor of Aeronautics and Director of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT). He received his bachelor (1960) and master (1962) degrees from the University of Melbourne and his Ph.D. degree (1965) in Aeronautics from Imperial College, London. He worked in the Aeronautical Research Laboratories, Melbourne, and in the Physics Department of the Australian National University (1967–1980), with a sabbatical year as a Humboldt Fellow in Darmstadt, Germany, 1974. In 1980 he accepted an offer to head the Institute for Experimental Fluid Mechanics of the DLR in Göttingen, Germany. He left Germany in 1987 to serve as the director of GALCIT. During his time at GALCIT he oversaw the construction of three large facilities: the T5 hypervelocity shock tunnel, the John Lucas Adaptive-Wall Wind Tunnel, and a supersonic Ludwieg tube.
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.
Ernest Edwin Sechler (1905-1979) was an aerospace engineer and scientist who specialized in thin-shell structures. He earned his doctorate in 1934 at Caltech as one of the early students of Theodore von Kármán with a dissertation on the mechanics of thin-plate compression.
Robert J. "Bob" Parks was a US aerospace engineer and pioneer in the space program where he was intricately involved and/or directed for some of the most historic and important U.S. unmanned space missions. Over a 40-year tenure at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL/NASA), located in Pasadena, California, Parks’ impact was essential to helping the United States lead the world in space exploration. He served as Guidance Engineer for Explorer 1, the first successfully launched satellite by the United States. He directed the initial flyby missions to the Moon, the first soft landing on the Moon, Earth's first successful mission to another planet and initial missions to Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus.
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.
Edward Seymour Forman was an American engineer and inventor known for his pioneering work in early rocketry in the United States. Forman, along with his collaborators in Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT), demonstrated the first practical jet-assisted take-off (JATO) of an aircraft in the United States. Forman was among the GALCIT innovators that went on to found Aerojet General Corporation, the largest rocket technology manufacturer in the 1940s, and the GALCIT Rocket Research Group itself became the precursor of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Homer Joseph "Stewie" Stewart (1915–2007) was an American aeronautical engineer, rocket propulsion expert, and Caltech professor, who pioneered the first American satellites.
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