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Theodore von Kármán

Theodore von Kármán
Theodore von Karman crop.jpg
Theodore von Kármán at the Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1950
Born (1881-05-11)May 11, 1881
Budapest, Austria-Hungary
Died May 6, 1963(1963-05-06) (aged 81)
Aachen, West Germany
Residence Hungary
Germany
United States
Citizenship Hungarian
American
Fields Aerospace Engineering
Institutions University of Göttingen,
RWTH Aachen,
California Institute of Technology,
von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics
Alma mater Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Thesis Untersuchungen über Knickfestigkeit (1908)
Doctoral advisor Ludwig Prandtl
Doctoral students Frank Malina
Tsien Hsue-sen
Chia-Chiao Lin
Hu Ning
Maurice Anthony Biot
Ernest Sechler
Known for Supersonic and hypersonic airflow characterization; Kármán vortex street
Notable awards ASME Medal (1941)
John Fritz Medal (1948)
Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy (1954)
Daniel Guggenheim Medal (1955)
Timoshenko Medal (1958)
National Medal of Science (1962)
Wilhelm Exner Medal (1962)
Foreign Member of the Royal Society

Theodore von Kármán (Hungarian: szőllőskislaki Kármán Tódor [ˈsøːlːøːskiʃlɒki ˈkaːrmaːn ˈtoːdor]; 11 May 1881 – 6 May 1963) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer, and physicist who was active primarily in the fields of aeronautics and astronautics. He is responsible for many key advances in aerodynamics, notably his work on supersonic and hypersonic airflow characterization. He is regarded as the outstanding aerodynamic theoretician of the twentieth century.

Kármán was born into a Jewish family in Budapest, Austria-Hungary as Kármán Tódor. One of his ancestors was Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel. He studied engineering at the city's Royal Joseph Technical University, known today as Budapest University of Technology and Economics. After graduating in 1902 he moved to the German Empire and joined Ludwig Prandtl at the University of Göttingen, where he received his doctorate in 1908. He taught at Göttingen for four years. In 1912 he accepted a position as director of the Aeronautical Institute at RWTH Aachen, one of the leading German universities. His time at RWTH Aachen was interrupted by service in the Austro-Hungarian Army from 1915 to 1918, during which time he designed the Petróczy-Kármán-Žurovec, an early helicopter.


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