Arthur Kantrowitz

Arthur Robert Kantrowitz (October 20, 1913 – November 29, 2008) was an American scientist, engineer, and educator.

Kantrowitz grew up in The Bronx, and graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School. He earned his B.S., M.A. and, in 1947, his Ph.D. degrees in physics from Columbia University.

During his graduate studies at Columbia, Kantrowitz started working as a physicist in 1936 for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), work he would keep for ten years. He went on to teach at Cornell University for the next ten years, and later founded the Avco-Everett Research Lab (AERL) in Everett, Massachusetts, in 1955. He developed shock tubes, which were able to produce the extremely hot gases needed to simulate atmospheric re-entry from orbital speeds, thereby solving the critical nose cone re-entry heating problem and accelerating the development of recoverable spacecraft. He was AERL's director, chief executive officer, and chairman until 1978 when he took on a professorship at Dartmouth College. From 1956 to 1978 he also served as a vice president and director of Avco Corporation.

Kantrowitz's interdisciplinary research in the area of fluid mechanics and gas dynamics led to contributions in the field of magnetohydrodynamics and to the development of high-efficiency, high-power lasers. He first suggested a system of laser propulsion to launch bulk payloads into orbit, using energy from ground-based lasers to increase exhaust velocity and thereby reduce the propellant-to-payload mass ratio. His concepts on laser propulsion were published in 1988.

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