Paul MacCready

Paul MacCready
MacCready shows a cross section of the AeroVironment/NASA Helios Prototype wing spar.
Born	Paul Beattie MacCready Jr. September 25, 1925 New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
Died	August 28, 2007 (aged 81)
Nationality	American
Education	Caltech
Engineering career
Projects	AeroVironment

Paul B. MacCready, Jr. (September 29, 1925 – August 28, 2007) was an American aeronautical engineer. He was the founder of AeroVironment and the designer of the human-powered aircraft that won the first Kremer prize. He devoted his life to developing more efficient transportation vehicles that could "Do more with less".

Born in New Haven, Connecticut to a medical family, MacCready was an inventor from an early age and won a national contest building a model flying machine at the age of 15.

MacCready graduated from Hopkins School in 1943 and then trained as a US Navy pilot before the end of World War II. He received a BS in physics from Yale University in 1947, an MS in physics from Caltech in 1948, and a PhD in aeronautics from Caltech in 1952. In 1951 MacCready founded his first company, Meteorology Research Inc, to do atmospheric research. Some of MacCready's work as a graduate student involved cloud seeding.

He started gliding after World War II and was a three-time winner (1948, 1949, 1953) of the Richard C. du Pont Memorial Trophy, awarded annually to the U.S. National Open Class Soaring Champion. In 1956 he became the first American pilot to become the World Soaring Champion. He devised the MacCready Theory on the correct speed to fly a glider depending on conditions and based on the glider's rate of sink at different air-speeds. Glider pilots still use the "MacCready speed ring".

With Dr. Peter B.S. Lissaman he created a human-powered aircraft, the Gossamer Condor, and thereby won the first Kremer prize in 1977. The award-winning plane was built out of aluminium tubing, plastic foam, piano wire, bicycle parts, and mylar foil for covering. In 1979, he built its successor, the Gossamer Albatross, which won the second Kremer prize for successfully flying from England to France.