Newsletter of the VKI Alumni Association · 2020. 10. 19. · 31th Newsletter of the VKI Alumni Association A new VKI Faculty Member: Georg May by GEORG MAY, VKI ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

Newsletter of the VKI Alumni AssociationISSUE 31, SEPTEMBER 2020

In This Issue:

From the Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

A new VKI Faculty Member:Georg May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Impact of Covid-19 on VKI activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

...Director’s Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

...VKI academic year 2019-20 – the COVID-19 year 3

...Confinement: reinventing mentoring and timemanagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

...Covid-19 required reorientation of experimen-tal research project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

...Impact of covid-19 on the students’ social life . . 7

Interview with Ronald Epstein (DC 1992 ) . . . . . . . 7

Interview with Nicholas Waterson (DC 1994),our new Editor, Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

The 1937 Hindenburg Accident Revisited . . . . . . . . 14

The Faith of Theodore von Kármán . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Theodore von Karman’s visit to Turkey in 1955and how it was reflected in the local press . . . 20

New book by Kent Misegades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

From the Editors

by JOHN WENDT, FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE VKIAND EDITOR, NORTH AMERICA

AND NICHOLAS WATERSON, DC 1994AND EDITOR, EUROPE

The year 2020 has been dramatic for everyone andthat certainly includes the VKI. It is often said that“change is the only constant” and the VKI has had

to make many changes this year. We start this Newslet-ter by introducing a major change in the faculty withthe addition of a new Associate Professor in the Aero-nautics/Aerospace department.

Covid-19 has resulted in a very rapid and fundamen-tal change in virtually every aspect of the Institute’s pro-grams. A series of articles by faculty and students willacquaint readers with the methods employed to con-tinue the educational and research activities since lock-downs were imposed last March. The positive attitudes

expressed by the authors are a tribute to the spirit of theVKI and will inspire all who read them.

Next we offer two very different stories by meansof interviews: one from a graduate who has combinedaerodynamics with finance to forge a career on WallStreet and the other who has applied the principles helearned at the VKI to a range of complex problems in theindustrial world. The latter, who is now Editor, Europefor this Newsletter, also recounts here an unexpectedpersonal connection to the discovery of coronaviruses.

Historical articles again occupy an important placein this Newsletter: one describes recent studies on thefamous Hindenburg dirigible accident and two focus oninteresting aspects in the life of our founder, Theodorevon Karman. The first discusses von Karman’s faith andthe second recounts his visit to Turkey in 1955.

Finally, we are always happy to announce the pub-lication of a book by one of our graduates. Here we in-troduce one designed to be used by secondary schoolstudents who have an interest in the industrial arts.

In closing, we welcome your contributions for futureissues, including information on how your life is chang-ing in this world where Change is the Only Constant.

31th Newsletter of the VKI Alumni Association

A new VKI Faculty Member:Georg May

by GEORG MAY, VKI ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

It is my pleasure to introduce myself to Members,Alumni, and friends of VKI. My name is Georg May,and I have recently been hired as Associate Professor

into the Aeronautics and Aerospace Department.

I suppose it is customary to give a brief overview ofwho I am, where I have been, and what I am interestedin. I will try to combine all this in a brief story of how Istarted my career, and how I ultimately got here.

Early on I discovered my interest in ComputationalFluid Dynamics. I started my education as a studentof Mechanical Engineering at RWTH Aachen Universityin Germany, roughly twenty-five years ago. During thattime, I spent a year at Dartmouth College in New Hamp-shire. As part of earning my Bachelor of Engineering,which I completed in 2000, I did a project on analysisof a thermal spraying system using CFD. I investigatedcombustion, nozzle flow, the transportation of particlesby the nozzle flow, and the impact of the particles on asurface to be coated. In the end, we had to present ourproject to a panel of professors, not unlike it is done forthe Research Master projects here at VKI. At the time,I was using a canned software product to do these in-vestigations. I certainly remember all the hard work Iput into the project, but also the frustration of not be-ing able to ‘do something’ about the deficiencies I hadto deal with. Was the product really adequate for simu-lating the combustion? I couldn’t look inside the code,or change the model.

I decided that I wanted to know more about numer-ical methods and modeling. I focused on math coursesthat taught me the basics. When I returned to AachenUniversity, I chose a Master thesis project that revolvedaround a computational analysis of flutter phenomenain turbines. This time, I was working with an in-housecode. This gave me the opportunity to look inside,and understand how to translate complex mathemati-cal models into useful software. I was sold on CFD, anddecided to do a PhD in this area.

After finishing my Masters’ degree in Aachen in2001, I enrolled in a PhD program at Stanford Univer-sity. Aside from the benefit of spending some time inCalifornia, this allowed me to work in Antony Jame-son’s group. Here I learned more than I can convey here

not only about CFD, but also about aerodynamic design,and, frankly, about being a researcher. I started to de-velop interests in high-order numerical methods, as Ifelt the ‘traditional’ methods for compressible flow sim-ulation were becoming exhausted, and were in need ofa push forward. At the time, the field was wide open.High-order methods, such as Discontinuous GalerkinMethods, or Spectral Difference Methods where consid-ered exotic. In fact, the latter was brand new, and I wasgiven the opportunity to help in the development.

After completing my doctoral thesis at Stanford in2006, I was hired at RWTH Aachen University as a Ju-nior Research Group Leader. With some funding fromthe German Government the ‘Aachen Institute for Ad-vanced Study in Computational Engineering Science’(AICES) had just been founded. This graduate schoolwas dedicated to doctoral training in all things com-putational, and I was fortunate enough to cover thearea of numerical methods for PDE. I spent ten yearsat AICES, becoming a professor along the way. I wasdoing research, teaching courses in numerical methods,and working with a bunch of very talented doctoralcandidates, some of whom have since become profes-sors themselves. I became interested in hybridized Dis-continuous Galerkin (HDG) methods. Even though myresearch became somewhat more mathematical of theyears, I never forgot the excitement about compress-ible flow simulation. This remained the gold standardto which the numerical methods I was interested in ulti-mately had to live up to.

Last year, a former student of mine alerted me tothe job opening here at VKI. Of course, I was intrigued.VKI is a household name for anyone interested in FluidMechanics. I still remember when I was a doctoral can-didate at Stanford, running to the library, hoping thatthey would have that monograph from the VKI LectureSeries on microfiche, because I couldn’t find it on the in-ternet. I read quite a few of those monographs, and evenbefore coming here as a professor, I had the pleasure ofgiving a lecture, in the 38th advanced CFD Lecture Se-ries. So, since that job search at VKI mentioned not onlya focus on CFD, but also high-order methods, I didn’thesitate and applied.

And so I am here, getting to know my colleagues,learning the ways of VKI, initiating new projects. I amaiming to bring my numerical expertise to simulationof high-enthalpy flows, among other things, and I havecompleted my first round of working with VKI ResearchMaster Students. After working from my apartment fora few months, due to the presence of that nasty COVIDvirus, it still feels pretty new. But I am looking forwardto getting to know even more members of the VKI com-munity, and I am looking forward to working with you!

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Impact of Covid-19 on VKI activities

...Director’s Words

by PETER GROGNARD

Dear Alumnae and Alumni, Dear friends of VKI, Ihope you have enjoyed a fine summer with youand your loved ones. As we prepare for the be-

ginning of the academic year 2020-2021, we are aboutto close fiscal year 2019-2020.

At the time of writing - September 11, 2020 - weare being reminded of the terror that struck the UnitedStates exactly 19 years ago. After September 11, 2001,the world would become a different place and never bethe same again.

Today, exactly six months after the World Health Or-ganization declared the global COVID-19 pandemic, welive in yet another world and a new reality.

After the Belgian Government declared a nationallockdown on March 13, 2020, the Institute switchedinto a new operating mode. Our Dean, Prof Jeroen VANBEECK, will describe the effect this has had on our aca-demic activities. Overall, we have managed to continueour academic activities rather well. I feel privileged forhaving led the virtual Graduation Ceremony for the RMStudents. We pledged to invite them all for a real recep-tion and party when things return to normal – hopefullyby next summer.

As for the impact on the research activities, and fullycomplying with all governmental directives, we decidednot to close the Institute, and continue to run the re-search projects. While this approach allowed to main-tain the project revenues, the Institute’s top line will forsure be impacted by the crisis.

Some VKI customers, especially those in the aviationindustry, are very hard hit, and consequently are forcedto making difficult decisions, for instance on dramati-cally reducing their R&D spending. The impact on VKI’srevenues for FY 2020 is still to be fully validated; thiswill be done in Q4 2O20. The impact on the profit andloss statement will also be significant, yet we believe FY2020 will be profitable for VKI. On a positive note, andthanks to the positive results in FY 2018 and FY 2019,VKI has not been faced with liquidity problems and is

confident about its cash position for the foreseeable fu-ture.

Also on the bright side, we have managed to startdeveloping new opportunities, related to the productionof wind energy, clean transportation based on hydrogen,etc. We are convinced that going forward, we can diver-sify our portfolio of customers and research activities,and hence, become less vulnerable to major (economic)shocks.

Attracting new customers and partners for VKI willrequire, even in COVID times, a certain level of per-sonal interactions. We have resumed physical meetingsin early July, yet with COVID numbers again on therise, we might be forced to scale back physical meetings.And while I had hoped to meet certain chapters of theAlumni Organization in 2020, I’d like to start planningvideo conferences in the last quarter of this year – I willdiscuss this with Prof Sieverding.

...VKI academic year 2019-20 – theCOVID-19 year

by JEROEN VAN BEECK, DC 1993,PROFESSOR & DEAN OF FACULTY

On February 29 my wife and I were still in Romefor the birthday of our son Jelle, who took thisnice picture at the Trevi Fountain.

Jeroen with Floortje in Rome on February 29

On our return to Belgium, the world changed rapidly.Governmental COVID-19 regulations resulted in no stu-dents on VKI site as of early March 2020, just before the

Association of the Alumni of the von Karman InstituteChaussée de Waterloo 72, 1640 Rhode-Saint-Genèse, Belgium

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start of the VKI PhD symposium and the VKI ResearchMaster midterm evaluation team meetings.

As Dean I was responsible that courses, examina-tions, the VKI PhD Symposium, the VKI Research Masterevaluation team meetings and Public Presentations wentonline and that experimental research master projectswere converted to advanced data-processing, reduced-order modeling or the use of CFD simulations. I am trulyimpressed how faculty, students, and engineers man-aged this very disruptive situation. The director advisedeveryone to look for the optimum work environment athome. Several students preferred to continue the Re-search Master from their home country. All managed toremain focused on getting their VKI diploma, which wasdelivered to them during a very nice online diploma cer-emony on Friday 26 June 2020.

Other social skills were developed now there wereno more VKI coffee breaks, no VKI study rooms, no tripsto ESA and similar, nor social events during weekends.But thanks to the VKI computer center staff, all possibleevents went online, like aperos. People had to be extracreative. It is clear that the younger generation bene-fitted from their advanced experience in social mediatools. They will have a bright future.

Lecture Series in March and April were all postponedhoping the situation would go back to normal as ofSeptember. Knowing the power of interactions in theVKI conference room, this was the logic choice.

Jeroen after several months of homeworking

But end May, the first VKI online Lecture Series tookplace on LES and related techniques. Honorary Profes-sor Carlo Benocci had set up this Lecture Series yearsago with world experts like Ugo Piomelli and EliasBalaras (DC91-92). Ugo and Elias themselves suggestedalready end March we should go online, because theywould probably not be able to come to VKI from theUSA and Canada.

I personally found the online event not pleasant, butthe participants loved it! They said they could very wellconcentrate on the online presentations, pose all ques-tions they prepared from the notes and presentationsthat were sent to them prior to the course. Two onlinesocial events were organized where everyone broughtits favourite drink, often Belgian beer. Of course, otherproblems arose like Californian participants that mixedup EST (Eastern Standard Time) and CEST (Central Eu-ropean Summer Time) for the replay of the recordedmorning sessions in the evening. The participants fromSouth Korea were super committed and always stayedup till far after mid-night with their cameras muted.

In the academic year 2020-2021 VKI lecture serieswill be online, with only VKI students and engineers inthe conference room. I hope we will return back to amore normal situation in 2021, the year VKI celebratesits 65th anniversary.

In absence of Jeroen Maartje watches for incoming mails

...Confinement: reinventing mentoringand time management

by DELPHINE LABOUREUR, DC 2007,ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

March 12th, 2020. I am finishing a nice technicalmeeting for a Cleansky project. While at home,around 22h30, the news drops: school will close

from next Monday. As a mother of Simon, 4 years oldat the time, and Martin less than 2 years old, I knowwhat it means: stay at home. I still come the MondayMarch 16th in the morning for a discussion about the






improvement of the experimental curriculum of the RMprogramme, but it will be my last onsite visit to VKI untilbeginning of June when schools reopened (except for 2mornings of experimental work).

These 2.5 months at home with my husband and mytwo kids were organized as follow: I was working from7am to 9-9:30 am, then from 1pm to 3.5-4 pm, and Iwas starting again around 8:30 pm until 22:30 or laterwhenever I had specific deadlines (like the signature ofa grant agreement). With that schedule, I was managingto work 4/5th time and managed to get things done byorganizing this time properly: morning for very intensework, afternoon for meetings, evening for a little bit ofboth depending on days, as well as answering emails.Of course, this schedule was sometimes modified dueto special meetings like ETM, RM public presentations,but also PhD defenses (I attended 2 public defenses andone private defense online), or due to meetings of myhusband, who was teaching at UCL at the time.

In terms of education, I had 3 RM students undermy supervision, as well as my PhD students, and severalstagiaires whose internship was converted to a distanceprogramme. I quickly realized that given the amount oftime I had to work, I could not keep up with all my dead-lines (both educational and contractual), I had to prior-itize. I then chose the RM first. I was meeting them veryoften (min. once a week the last month), preparing themfor the March and June evaluation teams as well as pub-lic presentations. The ones I followed were still in Bel-gium, isolated from their families, so needed additionalsupport. For one RM, these months were very intenseas we had to redirect the topic that was planned to befully experimental and had to be reoriented to a numer-ical work. Another RM was lucky and had done all themeasurements before confinement. The third one had avery challenging numerical implementation, which wasnot simplified by confinement and online meetings. Butoverall, my 3 RM did a wonderful job, all graduated, 2with honors, and thanked me for the support. One ofthem wrote me: “The environment within VKI is suchthat I felt comfortable in communicating all my ques-tions and ideas, and I was always met with sincere feed-back. I believe this kind of environment is greatly owed,in my case, to you and to my advisor, and for that I wantto express my deep gratitude.”

I also tried to follow my PhDs, making them rehearsefor the PhD symposium, following their work. One ofthem, Charline Fouchier (now Dr. Fouchier since Sept.11th), had to finish writing manuscript for beginning ofJune. But I realized afterwards that for the ones in themiddle of the research, I left them a bit more on theirown, so I spent several meetings during summer to keepup with these students.

For my contract work, I had some delays, but all

companies were in a similar position and most were verycomprehensive. In addition, I was greatly supported bycolleagues such as Mathieu Delsipee a senior test engi-neer, who was my eyes and arms at VKI while I could notcome, or Philippe Planquart, the research manager ofEA, who was of constant support and never reluctant tocall me at 8am when it was my only time slot availableto discuss contract related matters. Confinement helpedme to see that team work and trust in your colleagues isvery important.

My two kids and I at the start of Marco Virgilio publicdefense (fortunately, my husband took over during the

questions and deliberation time!)

When I really need to finish something but kids havedecided otherwise! (May 3rd 2020)

From this very intense and special period, I will al-ways remember the nice moments with my kids buildingplay house everywhere in the house, playing duplos andreading books. Even if combining work and kids (andchores like laundry, cleaning, etc. . . ) was exhausting, itled to unforgettable moments. I will always rememberthat as VKI faculty, students should be first, and contractwork, even if very important as well, will need to adaptin case of emergencies. As professor, it is important forus to be there for our students and support them thebest we can.






...Covid-19 required reorientation ofexperimental research project

by FEDERICO BERTELLI, RESEARCH MASTER STUDENT

I am very glad to be writing this contribution to tellyou my personal experience about the impact ofCovid-19 on the academic and social life at von Kar-

man Institute. As a newly graduated student with hon-ors in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Pisa,I was stimulated and encouraged by most of the pro-fessors at that time for applying for the VKI ResearchMaster program.

The broad range of significant and recognized VKIexpertise on fluid dynamics problems together with thecontinuous contact with industries in almost any areasof research made this research center the right place toenhance my scientific background in view of a futureprofessional career. My university knowledge in fluid dy-namics and turbomachinery flows, allowed me to havethe opportunity to attend the Research Master course inthe Turbomachinery and Propulsion Department, major-ing in the aerothermal study of gas turbine flows.

During the research program, I opted for an experi-mental project under the supervision and experience ofProfessor Sergio Lavagnoli. The work aimed to lay thefoundation for future measurement campaign in the VKIC-1 low-speed wind tunnel, focusing on the design andexperimental characterization of a novel modular turbu-lence generator.

The main feature of this new device offers the po-tential to control independently the free-stream turbu-lence intensity and the length scales from low to highlevels keeping the generated turbulence flow field suffi-ciently homogeneous and isotropic, with minimum pres-sure loss. Therefore, the success of the research projectwas measured by the ability to provide useful guidelinesfor the generation of coherent turbulence flow fields andrepeatable with such characteristics.

Until the pandemic situation of coronavirus com-pletely blocked the access to the VKI and limited the or-dinary course of the Research Master program, the sta-tus of the research project was in line with what wasinitially planned to meet the mid-term objectives, whilethe activities that were supposed to follow were forcedto stop.

Clearly, this was very frustrating since, due to thesudden change, the last and most important projecttasks which involved the manufacturing of the new tur-bulence generator, that was previously designed by us-ing CAD software, and the final experimental character-ization of the generated turbulent flow fields were def-initely redefined without any hope to start laboratorytests to meet the initial goals.

The experimental project was moving towards a nu-merical direction involving the use of computationalmethods for generating synthetic turbulent flow fieldswith the purposes to implement and set the Hot-wireand PIV post-processing routines useful for future vali-dation, and highlight the main benefits and limitationsof these measurement techniques in order to quantifythe uncertainty produced measuring the turbulence pa-rameters. Apparently, the policy of stay at home imposedby the Covid-19 pandemic gave me more time to workon the bibliographic research and to stimulate the de-veloping of the theoretical background for the new re-search activities.

Clearly, unlike working at VKI, the impossibility tohave frequent and face-to-face meetings with the su-pervisor and advisors slowed the progress of the re-search project. However, home working together withthe VKI online organization allowed the correct contin-uation and monitoring of the research activities and theResearch Master program without necessarily blockingthem.

Normally the academic and social life at von KarmanInstitute sometimes goes through moments of leisureand entertainment collective, which certainly contributeto ease the difficulties of the Research Master and tostrengthen the group cohesion, positive within the VKIcommunity. For this reason, my only regrets are not hav-ing spent the final moments of this long path with mymates but especially not having shared my achievementswith my Family during the Diploma Ceremony.

On the other side, I am so glad to report that mypassion and dedication allowed me to resist this suddenchange evaluating and investigating other new criticalaspects that turned out to be fundamental for the futureprospects of the research project. Enough to ensure thepossibility to return to the lab and continue for a PhD,investigating the impacts of turbulence parameters onthe aerodynamics of internal flows with a combinationof experiments and numerical simulations.






...Impact of covid-19 on the students’social life

by EMMANUEL GYLLINS, RM REPRESENTATIVE

Each year, new students face the challenge of go-ing through the research master at the von Kar-man Institute. This year is no exception, hosting

34 people with a different project assigned to each oneof us. With the amount of workload pushed on us, webuilt friendships through late night works, gatheringduring the weekend, which made us a strong team. Thisdefinitely created bonds unlike anything we could haveimagined before. As tradition goes, we organized multi-ple dinners and had some drinks in the centre of Brusselsto release the pressure.

Now talking about the elephant in the room, Covid-19 strikes us about halfway through the year, whichcompletely changed our social interactions. At first someof us didn’t believe we would be in lock down, but ul-timately we had to accept it, still having fun by bettingon the date of the lock down for the RM students. Wedidn’t know at the time what was about to happen, theboard of directors started to restrict us from going to lec-ture series with people from abroad, then things becamemore and more serious. Italian people (who are the ma-jority of the VKI) started to get discriminated againstwhen travelling by bus, or even at the supermarket dueto the virus spreading mostly in Italy.

When the lock down was announced, we just fol-lowed the rules, thinking it would not be too long. Strip-ping down every physical interaction didn’t prevent usfrom being together, as the coffee break that we wereused to have, continued on Skype meetings. The mostfrustrating was that we could not do the other dinnersthat we planned, and we couldn’t continue playing foot-ball together. Having online interaction sure was com-pletely different, but as new researchers we are used tobeing faced to challenges, and this was just one morechallenge, at least that was the spirit when the lockdown started. Most of us were working on the projectalone, while the TU people had to take quite a lot of ex-ams online, which apparently does not feel like a exam(and not in a good way).

By the end on the year, some of us being home alonestarted to feel less motivation, thankfully our bondswere sufficient to help each other to go through thisrough time. We were still hoping to get back together

for the diploma ceremony, which couldn’t happen afterall. Some of us got together afterwards, since we wereallowed to meet with restricted number of people. Weknow that this was not our final goodbye, and we hopeto be united all together again for next year’s diplomaceremony. We hope to do everything that we missed, likethe field trip, some dinners, or even a barbecue, once thepandemic is over. I believe that the physical separationdid not make our friendship weaker, even though someof our plans did not go accordingly.

Contributions collected by Claus Sieverding

Interview with Ronald Epstein (DC1992 )

by JOHN WENDT, FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE VKI

Ron Epstein (DC 1992) is one of very few VKI grad-uates who made the transition from an engineer-ing professional to that of a Wall Street analyst.

Thus he brought both a deep understanding of aerody-namics and finance to his employer, Bank of America,where he is Managing Director, Aerospace & Defense,BofA Global Research. His story should be of interest toany graduate who considers a similar career path.

Ron, please give our readers some background infor-mation.

"When I enrolled in the VKI, I was between my Master’sDegree and PhD Degree at Duke University. I was studyingin the Department of Mechanical Engineering & MaterialsScience and my research, at the time, focused on VortexElement Based Numerical Methods to model aircraft wakeflows, both fixed and rotary wing. Before Duke, I was aMath Major at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY.For the better part of my life I have been fascinated with“things that fly” of all shapes and sizes. As a child andinto my adult years and now with my children, I am anavid Radio Control Modeler. My dear wife has underwrit-ten this by allowing me to at least partially convert ourbasement into a shop/lab for model aircraft fabrication,complete with a 3D printer. I suppose it’s my version of aman cave, but I feel fortunate to be able to share my love offlight with my family. My eldest son, Henry, is applying to






colleges this year and wants to be an Aerospace Engineer.I guess the apple really does not fall to far from the tree."

Why did you choose VKI for your studies?

"To be honest, it was pure serendipity. One day whiledoing research at the Duke Engineering Library, I cameacross a VKI Lecture Series Monograph on Vortex Flows.While flipping through the Monograph, a small card fellout describing the Diploma Program and it had a returnaddress on it for more information on the courses of studyoffered. So, I sent back the card, later received an applica-tion, applied to the program and got in. At the time, likemany Americans at VKI, I got a scholarship from the USAir Force. The timing of the program at the VKI just hap-pened to work with the break between my Masters in Engi-neering studies and my PhD work. I had always regrettednot studying abroad as an undergraduate, so I threw cau-tion to the wind, thought it sounded like an interestingadventure and decided to attend. That said, I honestly hadno idea what I was getting myself into at the time. Before Iknew it, I found myself in coach class on an aging SABENA747 on my way to Brussels Airport."

What were the technical and social highlights of youryear at the VKI?

"On the technical front, first and foremost, I had myown wind tunnel. I never had that before and never hadthat again. The work I had done at Duke prior to the VKIwas largely computational; at the VKI I got to spread mywings to do experimental work. Under the watchful eye ofProf Mario Carbonaro, I became an expert in the idiosyn-crasies of the 5-hole pressure probe and measuring velocityfields in the wake of a C-130.

One of the numerous five-hole probes that Ron calibratedand kept as a VKI souvenir

"I even had the opportunity to write software to helpoperate the wind tunnel and do data acquisition. Mostpeople can’t remember what a Commodore 64 PC is to-day, but I taught one how to work with a wind tunnel and

operate the pressure acquisition data system. In additionto the hands-on work in the lab, I learned how to take ex-ams European Style, that is to say, one exam at the end ofthe course, sometimes oral. I had never done that before inthe US.

"From a social point of view, VKI was a great edu-cation for me. Being immersed in a community of like-minded aero-people from all over Europe was an amazingexperience, truly life changing. My travel experience be-fore the VKI was at best, limited. I was not very worldlywith a limited personal aperture for experiencing new lan-guages and cultures. The internet was nascent. So, therewas this whole unexplored world out there from my pointof view, that needed to be explored face to face. There wasno living vicariously through the experiences of others, asis so much easier to do today. The VKI introduced me toa wonderful group of a young professionals. The conver-sations over coffee and waffles during the afternoon cof-fee breaks were countless, as were the sampling of BelgianBeers and frites when roaming about Waterloo or Brus-sels with fellow students. My experience included takingFrench lessons in downtown Brussels, the purchase of anold Russian LADA Classic 2105 for touring about and lotsof weekend travel.

Ron receiving his VKI diploma from the hands of Prof.Alec Young, VKI Chairman

"It was an environment where one could make pricelessconnections. In one example, I remember working late intothe evening with a fellow student from Germany, Bern-hardt Eisfeld. I remember thinking to myself at the time,50 years ago, barely one generation ago at the time, ifan American and German were working late in Belgium,they very well could have been shooting at each other. Itseemed surreal to me at the time, that it could have evenhappened. Bernhardt and I became fast friends and I spenta weekend at his family home in Kaiserslautern. I alsolearned the proper way to say the name Thor in Norse,with the hard “Th”, learned why in Italy they say “pronto”when they answer the phone, and I even got to learn a bit






of Flemish, largely words for food and drink, somethingI never even imagined I would learn before attending theVKI."

Describe your career after graduating from the VKI?

"After graduating the VKI, I returned to Duke Univer-sity and completed my PhD. Soon after that, I moved to St.Louis, MO and got a job working with McDonnell Douglasin their CFD Group. In short order, McDonnell merged withthe Boeing Company and I was working as an Engineer inthe military CFD group at the new Boeing Company. In mytenure at Boeing, I got to support many of the productionmilitary aircraft programs, including the F-15, F-18, T-46,Harrier, C-17 and a couple early stage classified black pro-grams."

Sitting in the cockpit of a Boeing 787-9 at theFarnborough Airshow in 2014. This was the major first

public showing of the stretched 787.

"While at Boeing, I decided I wanted to transition rolesto one more related to business development and strategy.So, I went back to school and got an MBA Degree fromthe Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.While at Wharton, I got introduced to the financial worldand Wall St and soon after graduation took a job on theAerospace & Defense Fundamental Equity Research TeamMerrill Lynch. Over the years, now approaching my 21styear at the firm, I rose through the ranks and I am now theSenior Aerospace and Defense Analyst for the Americas atBank of America Merrill Lynch. I lead our investment ad-visory practice for all things related to the public equitymarkets for the Aerospace and Defense Industry and adja-cent markets.

"The combination of the Boeing 737 Max groundingnearly 18 months ago plus the impact of the Covid-19 pan-demic on Commercial Aerospace markets has kept me verybusy for the year or so. One never imagined that globalair traffic growth could decline over 10% in one year letalone somewhere between 60% to 70%, which will hap-pen in 2020 compared to 2019. In the modern jet age,

global air traffic growth has only declined three times,during the recession in the early 1990s, after the 9/11terrorist attacks and during the global financial crisis. Ineach case, air traffic 3% or less on an annual basis forone year. Thus, the impact of the pandemic on the globalcommercial aerospace and aviation markets has been un-precedentedly profound."

Discussing the fallout from the 737 MAX grounding onthe commercial aerospace industry on CNBC Squawk

Box. Ron is on CNBC from time to time to discussAerospace and Defense investing.

Why did you decide to study finance and did youraerodynamic background help you at this point?

"I have always been fascinated by the nexus betweenengineering and business and with the likes of ThomasEdison, Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers, Bill Boeing andGlenn Curtis or what I would call the early engineeringentrepreneurs. Aerospace in the early days was the techindustry of its time. From early on, I knew that was adirection I wanted to explore with my own career, but Iwas uncertain how to do so. While at McDonnell/Boeing,I decided that I wanted more and different challenges. Iwanted to be outside my comfort zone, something I hadgot accustomed to at the VKI. That’s not to say, I was nolonger fascinated by the technology, but I fell in love withthe industry and wanted more of macro role as a decisionmaker as opposed to the more micro role of engineering de-tails, so getting an MBA made sense. I graduated with anMBA from the Wharton School at the University of Penn-sylvania and took a job at Merrill Lynch as the most ju-nior member on the Aerospace & Defense Equity ResearchTeam.

"I feel blessed that I found a role, that allows me tocombine my love for aerospace with the wonder of finan-cial markets and the capital formation process. I am deeplyfascinated by both and get to work in a dynamic indus-try while focusing on subject matter that is close to myheart and I have a deep appreciation for. Having the tech-nical background and industry experience gives me a moregrounded perspective on the Aerospace & Defense Indus-try. As an analyst, I think it is deeply important to under-stand what a company does and how it does it. This would






be impossible in Aerospace & Defense without a deep un-derstanding of the underlying technology. Not only doesit allow me to make more informed decisions, it is a keypoint of differentiation between myself and my competi-tors. When 787 was going through its trials and tribula-tions and more recently with 737 Max, my technical back-ground has help me sort the wheat from the chaff and offerthe best-informed advice to my clients."

How would you describe the impact of your year atVKI on your career and on your life?

"Until I spent the year at the VKI, I had not trav-eled much, especially internationally. I had little interestin foreign languages, cultures and places. The experienceat the VKI ignited a lifelong interest in all such matters.It has had a profound impact on both my life and career.On a personal level, I enjoy traveling with the family andtake an interest in learning about new places, people, cul-tures and things. I have studied foreign languages and fre-quently vacation outside the USA.

Ron posing for an interview in Barron’s Magazine,holding a model of a Bombardier CS 110 (now A220) in

his office in New York.

"As for my career, being at the VKI for a year gave mecomfort with being outside my comfort zone – a comfortwith being uncomfortable. It boosted my confidence in my-self when confronted with unfamiliar situations. The yearat VKI was full of new experiences, from small everydayliving challenges experienced as a stranger in a strangeland, to larger “in the lab” professional challenges. Living,working, studying and playing among a motivated groupof young professionals in a foreign place was nothing shortof remarkable. My current job takes me around the worldand I am just as comfortable working in a city halfway

around the world as I am working in my own office. I amcomfortable in what many would think are uncomfortablesituations as the time at the VKI taught me to think on myfeet, be nimble and work in and with the uncertainty thatsurrounds us each day."

Ron, thank you very much for taking part in this in-terview and best of luck in the rest of your career.

Interview with Nicholas Waterson (DC1994), our new Editor, Europe

by JOHN WENDT, FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE VKI

Our last Newsletter (NL30) announced that Hans-Peter Dickmann had asked to step down as Ed-itor, Europe. The AA Board reluctantly agreed

with his request and thanked him for a decade of serviceto the Newsletter. The new Editor, Europe is NicholasWaterson (DC 1994) and the following interview is ouropportunity to introduce him to our readership.

Nicholas, please provide our readers with some back-ground information: where was your home, where didyou attend university and when did you decide that fluiddynamics would be your profession?

"I grew up in Richmond, a leafy suburb of London, Eng-land where my father was a medical doctor and professorof virology (see accompanying article). Following my stud-ies for a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering Science at ExeterUniversity in the UK, I was fortunate enough to get an ex-change scholarship to study for a Masters in Aerospace En-gineering at the University of Kansas in the USA. This wasa very formative experience and, though located deep inthe midwestern USA, I met people from all over the world,especially other Europeans, and found that I really enjoyedthe international setting. I already knew that I wanted tospecialize in fluid dynamics so I took every relevant gradu-ate course that I could find. Two running themes that havecontinued throughout my life were already evident backthen – fluid dynamics and working in an internationalsetting."

Why did you choose VKI for your studies?

"On returning from Kansas in 1988 I worked firstfor a year in the Aerodynamics Department at British






Aerospace, Hatfield, in the former De Havilland factorywhere they had built the Mosquito and the Comet (longbefore my time!) before moving to CHAM, a CFD soft-ware house and consultancy. CHAM was founded by thelate Professor Brian Spalding of Imperial College Londonwhose code PHOENICS was one of the very first general-purpose CFD codes. Though I had modelled transonic wingflows using Euler codes at British Aerospace, this was myfirst exposure to general industrial CFD.

"After 4 years at CHAM, I had gained quite a range ofexperience in applying CFD methods in industry but I wasvery conscious that I lacked a good understanding of theunderlying principles and what was going on “under thehood” of a CFD code. I had been aware of the VKI DiplomaCourse for a while and I felt this would fulfil my aspira-tions in this respect so not without some trepidation, I gaveup my job and set out to join the 1993/94 VKI DiplomaCourse.

An early attempt at a “selfie”, with David Schleicher (left)

Smiling in the face of adversity – Diploma Course projectdeadline looms in the computer centre: Peter Flohr,

Chiara Palomba and David Schleicher (left to right).

"I found most of the DC courses interesting but I es-pecially enjoyed the numerics ones as I had never hadany formal CFD education. I already had my project ar-ranged before I arrived as my former employer CHAM had

agreed to sponsor a study concerning higher-order convec-tion schemes. I found this project really interesting, espe-cially trying to link up two different methodologies andthis became a long-running interest of mine which ex-tended into my PhD work."

What were the technical and social highlights of yourDiploma Course year at VKI?

"One special privilege of being at the VKI is being ableto attend the various Lecture Series, of which I certainlytook full benefit, and there were also visiting talks by thelikes of Bram van Leer, Philip Roe, Antony Jameson andSir James Lighthill. The latter gave an entertaining lec-ture in which, supported by colourful handwritten over-head slides, he physically re-enacted the various propul-sion mechanisms of bacteria.

At the Versailles Palace with (left to right) Guido Rau,Bernard De Saedeleer, Salvatore Pignataro, Emmanuel De

Montillet De Grenaud, Jean-Luc Di Liberti, DoertheMoeller, Tom Wayman, David Schleicher and Bahadir

Alkislar.

End of year barbecue, 1994, from left: Lars Holmedal,Jens Burgschweiger, Cristina Guerreiro, ?, Hasan Bedir,

Peter Flohr, Thibauld Jongen, Giovanna Barigozzi,Elisavet Troupaki, Bahadir Alkislar, Kevin Detwiler,

Edoardo Salimbeni, ?, Chiara Palomba, Doerthe Moeller,Tom Wayman, Murat Cakan

"From the social perspective, recalling my time at theVKI brings back a blur of memories – social evenings inand around the Grand Place, late night visits to “pitastreet”, dining in back street brasseries, breakfast at the






“Pain Quotidien”, walks among the towering beech treesof the Forêt de Soignes, endlessly riding the bus on theChaussée de Waterloo, movies with French and Dutch sub-titles, volleyball and tennis in the sports centre, the cheery,multilingual canteen ladies and interesting coffee breakdiscussions accompanied by the sugar gaufres which didso much damage to my waistline. For much of my timethere I lived in a lovely apartment in Ixelles with two ter-races looking out over the Brussels rooftops of which I havefond memories."

Nicholas receiving his VKI diploma from the hands ofProf. André Jaumotte, VKI Chairman

Describe your studies following graduation.

"Following graduation from the DC and some timespent on a short contract, I joined the PhD programme,supervised by Herman Deconinck, working on a Euro-pean collaborative project “Numodion” on the simulationof electroplating. I worked on the flow and thermal aspectswhile colleagues at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel worked onthe electrochemistry. Unusually this project gave me theopportunity to write a full unstructured 3D CFD code al-most from scratch, using a residual distribution approachand a coupled implicit solver. During this time I also spentsome time at the supercomputer centre at Edinburgh Uni-versity and at Delft University of Technology in the Nether-lands from where I would later obtain my doctorate as anexternal student."

Describe your career after leaving the VKI.

"Since leaving the VKI in 1999 I have basically had twoseparate careers, both centred on fluid dynamics and nei-ther of which I would have anticipated when I was settingout.

"The first of these was in the international construc-tion industry based in London and working for a largeengineering consultancy Mott MacDonald. There I led ateam of simulation specialists on a range of topics in-cluding aerodynamics of buildings, metro systems, tunnelsand bridges, wind engineering, ventilation, air quality andsmoke control. I also got involved in an interesting sideline

concerning the mass movement of pedestrians which has aclose analogy to compressible gas flow. Ironically, lookingback, two projects which stand out are ones which didn’tget built – a 50m high bronze statue of a seated Buddhaand a 1km high solar updraft tower for generating power.I enjoyed learning to interact with all kinds of other disci-plines such as civil engineers, architects and designers andgetting involved in major infrastructure projects such asthe Crossrail line under London and the new Noordzuidlijnmetro under Amsterdam.

Two unexpected careers linked by fluid dynamics: visitinga new rail tunnel in Rotterdam (top) and an ASML

Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine(bottom).

"Between 2006 and 2010 I also held a position as apart time faculty member in the Aeronautics Departmentat Imperial College London funded by a fellowship fromthe UK Royal Society. There I supervised many studentprojects and also taught a final year undergraduate courseon applied aerodynamics. It was challenging to balancethis with my consultancy day job and the demands of ayoung a family but it was a wonderful experience for whichI am very grateful.






Results from two of many student projects that Nicholashas supervised over the years: above, simulation of wind

flow over a tandem bridge deck (Imperial College London,2010) and, below, large-eddy simulation of flow through

an orifice plate (University of Twente, 2019).

"My second post-VKI career, since 2012, has been inthe semiconductor industry, specifically at ASML in theNetherlands. ASML is a Dutch success story, originatingas a spin-off from Philips 30 years ago and now dominat-ing the world of semiconductor lithography and powering“Moore’s Law”. It assembles its enormous lithography ma-chines close to Eindhoven and ships them from there allover the world. Writing onto silicon chips with almost un-believable and ever-increasing levels of precision requiresa wide range of different technologies and a whole cornu-copia of fluid dynamic phenomena including sub- & su-personic, continuum & molecular gas flows, laminar &turbulent water flows, various forms of multiphase flow,microfluidics and acoustics. I lead the activities on mini-mizing flow-induced vibrations, an interesting and chal-lenging topic at the interface between messy non-linearturbulent flow and linear acoustics."

Have you been in contact with any of your fellowgraduates?

"I have found it hard to keep in regular contact with mywidely spread VKI contemporaries though I have been ableto keep in touch with some people. I have also attendedthe 50th and 60th VKI Anniversaries and various otherevents and open days at which it has been fun to meet oldfriends. During the past academic year I co-supervised theproject of a Masters student from the University of Twentealong with Edwin van der Weide, my former VKI office-mate, now an assistant professor at Twente, which was agood experience."

Looking back on your time at the Institute, what im-pact did that experience have on your career and moregenerally on your life?

"I came to the VKI originally wanting to deepen my un-derstanding and my time there certainly lived up to thataspiration. It has given me a familiarity with the underly-ing equations and the confidence to apply them to a widerange of engineering problems in my subsequent career.

Waterson family, on holiday in England, summer 2020

"And of course I met my wife Christiane! She comesfrom Germany and had just finished her degree atLouvain-la-Neuve when we met. We married in Brusselsin 2001 and now live on neutral territory in the south ofthe Netherlands with our three teenage children."

Coronavirus and me – an unexpected connection

Over the last few months of “corona time” we haveall been learning to grapple with new concepts such as“R” and “K” numbers and telling an antigen test froman antibody test but for me personally it has also beenvery interesting to discover a nugget of my own fam-ily history and through this the story of the discovery ofhuman coronaviruses.

My father, Anthony Waterson, who passed away in1983, was a doctor and professor of virology so for usas a family infectious diseases were a common topic ofdinner table conversation – it was quite normal to speakabout swine flu, hepatitis B and green monkey disease.However I wasn’t ever aware of hearing the term “coron-avirus” so I was intrigued and surprised to discover, justas the pandemic was getting going, that my father hadplayed a role in their discovery and that indeed the term“coronavirus” seems to have been coined at a meeting inhis office in 1968.

The story began in the early 1960s, when researchersat the UK government “Common Cold Research Unit”identified an unusual virus strain in samples from a boys’boarding school. They found that this virus caused com-mon cold symptoms but had properties that were quitedistinct from the familiar rhinoviruses and they there-fore wished to find out more. David Tyrrell, head of theunit, later wrote in his book “Cold Wars” (2002):

“I decided to seek help from Tony Waterson, the newprofessor of virology at St Thomas’ Hospital, London. Hehad just recruited an electron microscopist, June Almeida,who was seemingly extending the range of the electron mi-






croscope to new limits. . . . She claimed that she would beable to find virus particles in our organ cultures with hernew, improved techniques. We were not too hopeful butfelt it was worth a try. The results exceeded our all ourhopes . . . and her pictures revealed their structure beauti-fully. Now June was confident that these three viruses weresomething quite new.”

As later described, the particles seen were “roundedin profile” with a characteristic “fringe of rounded orpetal shaped projections”, similar to but clearly distinctfrom the spikier flu viruses. In parallel with these devel-opments, American researchers in Chicago had also iso-lated similarly unusual cold viruses collected from med-ical students. A sample of one of these was sent to Lon-don for imaging by June Almeida and indeed it also dis-played the same distinctive structure. In the followingcouple of years a key breakthrough was to realize thatthese new human viruses were related to already knownviruses which caused respiratory problems in animals,such as mice and birds, and that together they consti-tuted a new virus group. The term “coronavirus” wasnot used in the early published papers and the circum-stances of its coinage were recounted by David Tyrrell:

“We sat down in Waterson’s office to consider the im-plications of these results. Even though we could only baseour judgement on the electron microscope images we werequite certain that we had identified a previously unrecog-nised group of viruses. So what should we call them?’Influenza-like’ seemed a bit feeble, somewhat vague, andprobably misleading. We looked more closely at the ap-pearance of the new viruses and noticed that they had akind of halo surrounding them. Recourse to a dictionaryproduced the Latin equivalent, corona, and so the namecoronavirus was born.”

This meeting appears to have taken place in 1968and in November of that year a short article in the jour-nal Nature reported that an “informal group” of eight vi-rologists, including Almeida and Tyrrell, had recognizeda new group of viruses with an appearance “recallingthe solar corona” and that these viruses were “membersof a previously unrecognized group which they suggestshould be called the coronaviruses, to recall the char-acteristic appearance by which these viruses are identi-fied in the electron microscope.” This was the first timethat the now familiar term “coronavirus” appeared inprint. Kenneth McIntosh, the only surviving member ofthe group of eight and still active at Harvard MedicalSchool, recalled recently in the New York Times that atthe time “Not much was made of it, It was just the com-mon cold. Not a big deal.” It was only in the early 2000swith the advent of “SARS” that the wider implications ofcoronaviruses for human health started to become evi-dent.

My father, Anthony Waterson, holding a model of a fluvirus, and one of June Almeida’s original images of ahuman coronavirus showing the “fringe of rounded or

petal shaped projections ... recalling the solar corona”, incontrast to the spikier flu structure.

June Almeida’s interesting life story (the daughterof a Glasgow bus driver, she left school at 16 and heronly academic qualification was a doctorate) has beentold for example on the BBC web site and in a New YorkTimes article which are available online. In 1967 my fa-ther and his team, including June Almeida, moved to theRoyal Postgraduate Medical School in London and he re-mained there as head of department until his retirementin 1982. As for myself, I was born in 1964, right in themiddle of these developments so it’s probably not sur-prising that I don’t recall it being discussed at the time –my mind was on other things!

The 1937 Hindenburg AccidentRevisited

by KENT P. MISEGADES, DC 1980

In my recent few articles, the close association thatTheodore von Kármán enjoyed with airship pioneerZeppelin has been described. It was Zeppelin’s fi-

nancing of Germany’s first wind tunnel that brought TvKback to Göttingen just in the nick of time. Success atGöttingen’s AVA led to his appointment as the first direc-tor of its rival AIA at the RWTH Aachen. His young as-sistant there, sailplane designer and record-holding pi-lot Wolfgang Klemperer, moved to Zeppelin in southern






Germany in 1922 and then emigrated to the US in 1924when he joined the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation inAkron, Ohio. In order to entice von Kármán to moveto the US, in 1929 the Guggenheim Foundation offeredhim the directorship of both a new research laboratoryfor airship studies in Akron, Ohio as well as the Guggen-heim Aeronautical Labs at Cal Tech (GALCiT).

Despite significant success that Zeppelin had hadwith its luxury Atlantic flights in the 1930s, the Amer-ican public today associates the ‘Zeppelin’ with only twothings: a popular rock group from the 1970s, and the LZ129 Hindenburg accident in Lakehurst from May 1937.

Having started my engineering career with Dornier,originally the aircraft division of Zeppelin, my knowl-edge of those great airships is perhaps better than most,however other than the iconic images of the Hinden-burg going down in flames I will admit that details onwhat really transpired on that fateful, stormy day wereunknown to me.

Last fall I received a phone call from a pilot friendof mine, USAF Colonel and American Airlines captainJason Harris, who lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado.Jason, who was inspired to pursue aviation by one ofthe few surviving Tuskegee Airmen (African-Americanmen prepared for WWII air combat at the Tuskegee In-stitute in Alabama, near my alma mater of Auburn Uni-versity), had been asked to narrate an episode of thepopular NOVA TV science series, produced in the US anddistributed globally. The subject of the show was a newscientific effort at reconstruction of the Hindenburg ac-cident.

The D.-L.Z. "Hindenburg"in flight over Friedrichshafen lake

The justification for revisiting an old topic was therecent re-discovery of a high-resolution color film takenby an amateur film-maker during the landing attemptsof the Hindenburg on a day of high winds and thunder-storms around Lakehurst. Jason knew that I had livednear Zeppelin’s former headquarters of Manzell, homenow to an MTU factory producing large ship diesel mo-tors on Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen. He asked

for my help in gaining support from the head of theZeppelin Archive for their planned November visit toFriedrichshafen. Through some gentle persuasion in thelocal dialect, I was able to help them get what theywanted – access to all documents related to LZ 129 in-cluding artifacts retrieved from the crash site.

I have been shown several still shots from the newly-found film, and they are indeed impressive. The filmis much longer than the grainy black-and-white videoknown by most and was shot from behind and to the leftof the Hindenburg, which is where the internal struc-tural failure started that caused the ultimate explosionand crash.

Viewers can clearly see some dramatic internal hy-drogen gas flows prior to the fire. But now I am givingaway the findings of the well-qualified people involvedin making this NOVA episode.

This show was partially funded by the German state-owned TV channel ZDF, so at least in Germany it willbe aired following its release in the US in the late spring/ early summer 2020. I assume this means it will beshown across Europe and likely in many other countries.It is also possible to view the NOVA series online accord-ing to its web site. I can highly recommend watching.

And, if you are ever in Friedrichshafen, make sureyou spend a few hours in the outstanding Zeppelin andDornier museums there.

The Faith of Theodore von Kármán

by KENT P. MISEGADES, DC 1980

As a result of my research behind past articles con-cerning the namesake of our beloved Von KarmanInstitute, I have come to know better the char-

acter of Theodore, a man not only of broad scientificintellect but also someone with a solid spiritual founda-tion that was not immediately obvious to others. Havingcollected what has become a fairly substantial body ofreference material on his life, his family as well as theconditions existing during his lifetime, I feel confident,and compelled, to address a topic that is rarely men-tioned directly in the literature: the Faith of Theodorevon Kármán.






To claim that Theodore was a strongly religious manwould be making a gross exaggeration; to state that hewas a man without religion however would be patentlyfalse. A first hint of this was his parents’ choice of a namefor the third of what was to become five children: first,two boys in short succession (Elemer in 1874 followedby Feri in 1875), then Theodore (in 1881), followed byanother pair later, (son Miklos in 1884 and Theodore’sbeloved sister Josephine – Pipö – in 1887). BetweenFeri and Theodore, their mother Helene had lost a son.When their new baby Theodore arrived in the worldhealthy, Maurice and Helen Kármán (they weren’t ‘vons’yet) chose the name “Tódor”, the Hungarian word forthe Greek Theodore, meaning “Gift of God” (from θεoς[theos] "God" and δωρoν [doron] "gift"). They could nothave known how prophetic this choice was, consideringthe many contributions to science, industry, and human-ity their little boy was destined to make in his lifetime.

István Hargittai’s “Martians of Science” providesconsiderable insight into the unique conditions existing in

Hungary for the Jewish people during Theodore vonKármán’s early life.

An important backdrop to this discussion is the so-called “Era of Emancipation” that existed in Hungaryin the latter half of the nineteenth century. This is de-scribed well in the book “Martians of Science – FivePhysicists who Changed the Twentieth Century”, IstvánHargittai’s seminal treatise on why Hungary producedso many of the world’s leading scientists in the early20th century. As he explains: “Budapest in the periodof 1867-1914 was a uniquely fertile site for promotingtalent. The first date refers to the so-called Compromisebetween the Habsburgs and Hungary and the second theoutbreak of World War I. The Compromise was called

Ausgleich in German and Kiegyezés in Hungarian. TheHabsburgs and the Hungarians had come to an agree-ment following the crushed Hungarian revolution andwar for liberation of 1848-1849 against Austria. TheHabsburgs could not defeat the Hungarians alone andhad to call on the Russian czar for their rescue. A periodof ruthless terror followed and finally Austria, weak-ened by lost foreign wars, could no longer live with arebellious nation under her rule. . . With 1867, the dooropened to unprecedented progress in Hungary, and Bu-dapest became one of the fastest growing cities in Eu-rope. Immigration was encouraged. At the end of thenineteenth century Budapest was one of the main des-tinations of Jewish immigration in the world, second,perhaps, only to New York City. According to some, themore well-to-do Jews congregated in Budapest and thepoorer went to New York.”

On this final point, in his biography, “The Wind andBeyond”, Theodore mentions his reluctance to move tothe United States when he was first offered a positionat Cal Tech in 1928: “First, I found myself agreeing withmany of my friends in German academic circles whenthey warned me not to change continents at my age (Iwas nearly fifty), especially as I would be entering anenvironment in which the social position of a universityprofessor was much lower than in Germany. Second, mymother objected to the U.S.A. She was obsessed with theEuropean upper-class belief that only misfits and familyblack sheep settled in America.” Only a few years latershe would be reigning as the undisputed queen over thevon Kármán household in Pasadena, California, in starkcontrast to the disastrous plight of Jews across all of Eu-rope in the 1930s.

Hargittai continues: “The Hungarian nobility – andit was a large class, especially those without any land– monopolized the political bureaucracy and the mili-tary. It left wide open the professional intellectual tradeswhich became vastly popular among recently emanci-pate Jews as well as among the Germans and other mi-norities. There seemed to be a welcome division of laborbetween Hungarians and Jews with intensifying Jewishassimilation. This assimilation was largely welcomed bythe Hungarians and especially the political elite. Thiswas because the loyal Jewish Hungarians strengthenednumerically the Hungarian population that found itselfin the minority in large areas of this multiethnic coun-try.” Ironically, it was a result of the historical persecu-tion of the Jewish people across Europe that broughtsome of their best and brightest minds to Budapest atthis time. As Hargittai states: “In any case, their num-bers were swelling because of the absence of persecu-tion. They burst onto this scene after centuries of havingbeen excluded from the professions. They were readyfor the new opportunities because of their culture thatvalued education. Budapest in the early 1900s.






Helen and Maurice von Kármán, early in their marriage.

To understand the Faith of Theodore von Kármánis akin to studying the sun with your naked eye: youwon’t see any details, even when squinting. Block outthe sun with a circular disk of the same diameter whenviewed from Earth, and one can easily see solar flaresand the sun’s corona with the right filters and optical in-struments. To understand the Faith of Theodore von Kár-mán, one needs to study the lives of his parents, Mauriceand Helen. In contrast to the rebellious youth that par-ents have come to expect in recent decades, Theodoredeeply respected his parents and followed their advice,even after their deaths. As he stated in the openingpages of his biography, “As I look back on this impres-sive parental merger, it seems very logical to me that mycareer should have been directed toward science fromthe beginning.”

The Kármán family held strong ties to some of themost noted figures in eastern European Jewish faith inthe latter half of the Second Millennium. Theodore’s fa-ther, Mór (Maurice) Kármán, son of a tailor from Szeged(160 km southeast of Budapest near the borders to Ser-bia and Romania) was noticed as a young man by thegreat Hungarian rabbi Judah Leib "Leopold" Löw, re-garded as the most important figure of Neolog Judaism.

Neologs represented one of the two large communalorganizations among Hungarian Jewry, more inclinedthan Orthodox Jews toward integration into Hungar-ian society since the Era of Emancipation in the 19thcentury. Although Maurice turned down Rabbi Löw’s of-fer to enter the rabbinate, he was likely encouraged byhis great teacher to move to Budapest, where oppor-tunities for study were greater than in the provincialSzeged, where, in Theodore’s words: “In the country-side of my grandfather the peasants still toiled on vastestates owned by the aristocrats, and still paid serflike

obeisance [deferential respect, such as a bow or curtsy]to the landed gentry.” By contrast were the hilly Buda(west bank of the Danube) and sprawling Pest (eastbank): “I can still see the stately old government build-ings along the Danube, the neat parks and their manystatues of military heroes; and I have no trouble at allin recalling the horse-drawn droshkies (still my favoriteform of transportation) carrying silk-gowned womenand their Hussar counts in red uniforms and furred hatsthrough the ancient war-scarred hills of Buda. Every-where I see elegance in dress and manner and the signsof leisure and gaiety.” Maurice studied philosophy andpedagogy at the University of Vienna, then earned hisdoctorate at the University of Budapest.

The great Hungarian rabbi Judah Leib "Leopold" Löw,regarded as the most important figure of Neolog Judaism,

was influential in Maurice Kármán’s desire to studyoutside of Hungary and embrace the growing

international culture of Budapest.

Rabbi Löw’s influence in this regard over the vonKármán family led it to becoming one of the strongestforces in the pioneering education reform work of Mau-rice, to their Budapest household’s popularity as a meet-ing place for intellectuals from all backgrounds and reli-gions, to Maurice’s and son Theodore’s pursuing studiesand work outside of Hungary, and to Theodore’s life-long desire to bridge the gap between scientific theoryand application and to bring people of different culturestogether in their pursuit of common goals in war and inpeace. (Here one must think of the many internationalmarriages that resulted from the VKI experience, includ-ing mine of 38 years and counting.)






Judah Loew ben Bezalel or Rabbi Loew, here depictedwith the Golem of Prague he created from clay. Some

attribute author Mary Shelley’s story Frankenstein to thistale from the 16th century.

Theodore’s mother, Helen Konn (also Kohn), wasa descendent of Judah Loew ben Bezalel or RabbiLoew, (alt. Löw, Loewe, Löwe, or Levai) of the 16thcentury, widely known to scholars of Judaism as theMaharal of Prague, or simply The Maharal, the He-brew acronym of "Moreinu Ha-Rav Loew" ("Our Teacher,Rabbi Loew"). He was an important Talmudic scholar,Jewish mystic, and philosopher who, for most of hislife, served as a leading rabbi in the cities of Mikulovin Moravia and Prague in Bohemia. He is also the sub-ject of a 19th-century legend that he created the Golemof Prague, an animate mythological being fashionedfrom clay. [Wikipedia]. Some references claim that theGolem of Prague was the world’s first mechanical robot,however I believe they are mistaking this for a 1920science fiction play by the Czech writer Karel Capekcalled “R.U.R.”, which stands for Rossumovi UniverzálníRoboti (Rossum’s Universal Robots). As an interestingaside, one of the surnames of Rabbi Loew’s descendants’surnames is Oppenheimer.

Ultimately it was his father who held the greatestsway over Theodore’s life. As Hargittai describes: “Theelder von Kármán was a strong influence on his son, whoforever remembered the intellectual curiosity his fatherinduced in him. They would talk about science, politics,and religion, and Mór taught his son that ‘If one doesn’t

sympathize with revolutionaries when one is young, hehas no heart. If accepts their ideas when he is old, he hasno brain.’ By then the elder von Kármán had rejected theteachings of Marx and Engels, but the younger von Kár-mán remained open to them throughout his youth. Theirdiscussions about faith taught von Kármán to carefullyseparate science and religion.”

Mihály Munkácsy’s world-famous painting ‘The ChristBefore Pilate’ from 1881 does bear some resemblance toMaurice von Kármán, which gave rise to claims that he

had posed for it.

From Theodore’s biography, written near the end ofhis life in the early 1960s: “When the Hungarian artistMihály Munkácsy’s world-famous painting The ChristBefore Pilate was exhibited in 1881 in Budapest, theword went around in university circles that Maurice hadposed for it. My father smiled at the comparison. “Christis my model,” he said, “I could never be His.” Concern-ing his father’s temper and efforts to seek justice for allthose he considered wronged, Theodore wrote: “Despitehis disposition for battle, my father developed a devotedfollowing of students and colleagues, and he stood like agiant among men. His theories of education, the force ofhis logic, and his unswerving idealism drew accolades.As a boy my great desire was to be like him, but I hadnot inherited all of his fighting spirit. Long ago I decidedthat it is impossible for one man alone to wipe out everyinjustice. Since then I’ve fought even less. I have cometo view the world with a cynical eye; and though eventsof the last twenty years have given me good cause to de-fend my cynicism, in the depth of my soul I still envy myfather’s holy fervor and his zeal in defending the truthas he saw it.”

The ”happy peace time of 1867-1914”, as Hargittaicalls those years between the Compromise and the startof World War One, saw a rapid increase in the Jew-ish population of Hungary, in particular in Budapest.As he describes this period in his Martians of Science:“Even though some professions did not open up for Jewsbetween 1867 and 1914 – and this was not explicitlyspelled out, either – there was a tremendous opening up






in opportunities for the Jewish middle class, and evenrecently arrived immigrants, that was unthinkable a fewdecades before. The unprecedented growth of the coun-try and enhancement of opportunities was matched bythe thirst for such opportunities among the heretoforesuppressed Jewish population and other minorities aswell. The outcome was spectacular. Its impact was mag-nified in the decades to come because so much of thistalent would leave and find self-fulfillment abroad, ini-tially in Germany, and ultimately in the United States.The Martians were not unique in this respect. In ad-dition to scientists, Hungary ejected significant play-wrights and composers, artists and film directors, musi-cians and mathematicians, economists, and many othersinto the international scene.”

Eastern European countries were not the only oneswho limited the lives of their Jewish citizens. For in-stance, Switzerland allowed Jews to only live in two vil-lages in Canton Aargau, Endingen and Lengnau, in theSurbtal valley near the German border, approximately18 miles from Zurich. Around 1650, Marharam (Meir)Guggenheim was their leader. Jews were barred frommost professions and were not allowed to own propertyor farm the land. Some made a living peddling and cat-tle trading and were required to pay special taxes. In1847 at 21 years of age, one Jewish resident of Lengnau,Meyer Guggenheim, emigrated to the United States toseek better opportunities. Initially Meyer Guggenheimbuilt an import firm in Philadelphia, which specializedin Swiss embroideries. In the early 1880s he acquiredinterests in two Colorado copper mines. Realizing theirpotential value, he eventually invested his entire for-tune in the mines. Under the direction of his son, DanielGuggenheim, the family’s mining and smelting businessamassed one of the world’s greatest fortunes. Thanks tothe influence of Daniel’s son Harry, a US Navy pilot dur-ing World War One, Theodore’s future GALCIT lab at CalTech was funded.

Hargittai explains in detail how this period of ex-plosive freedom, felt uniquely by Jews of eastern Eu-rope, came to a crashing halt with the confusion in themonths immediately following World War One and laterwith the rise of the brutally anti-semitic regime of Admi-ral Miklós Horthy, whose increasing oppression of Jews– including their deportation to concentration camps -predated those of the Nazis by a decade. It did have thepositive effect of convincing Jews to leave Hungary forbetter, safer opportunities abroad. But even in Aachen,Theodore eventually sensed that he was on borrowedtime – with the rise of Nazism, he was understandablywary, having seen the first signs of anti-semitism beforein his native country. This made his decision to make thepermanent move to the United States all the easier. Hewas followed by a great number of his younger Hun-garian contemporaries, including Leo Szilard, Eugene

P. Wigner, John von Neumann, Edward Teller – thesefive are the focus of Hargittai’s book, which the authorstrongly recommends.

The ‘Shoes on the Danube Promenade’ at the end ofSzechenyi Street in Budapest is a memorial to the fate ofHungarian Jews from the start of the Horthy regime in

March, 1920 until its tragic culmination with the ArrowCross Party’s murder of Jews in the winter of 1944-45.

While there is no record of him ever lecturing orwriting on religion, writing in his biography shortly be-fore his death, von Kármán had clear thoughts on itsrole in his own life: “As time went on I loved to cometo my father with questions on religion. “If we really be-lieve that God knows everything, and therefore knowsall the laws of physics, why does he hide them?” I askedonce. My father said it was a silly question. “It is contra-dictory to the idea of the Deity [God]. We don’t alwaysknow why He does a thing, but we trust that He will dothe best with us.” I thus learned from my father to sep-arate thinking and feeling, the domains of my mind andthe heart. My father taught me to believe in God, sayingthat science only deals with consistency, not with truth.It is man’s way of organizing his experiences, and noth-ing more, my father would say. I never saw any conflictbetween science and religion, and I think it is becauseof these early discussions with my father.”

Perhaps this helps to explain the thinking behind oneof his best-known sayings, regarding the difference be-tween a scientist and an engineer: “Scientists study theworld as it is, engineers create the world that never hasbeen.”

A Christian engineer friend of mine, owner of an au-tomation business and a former state Senator in the Ver-mont Legislature, recently commented on why we engi-neers like to create: “Because that is part of the unique-ness of humanity, being made in the image of God. Un-like all other species, we are creators. Those who do notcreate have, in part, reduced themselves to the likenessof an animal. God created because that is His nature. It isthe same for us and exercising our creative nature is partof growing in the likeness of our Creator and growing inour understanding of our Creator and His creations.”






In closing, I’d like to add some clarity to the confus-ing subject of names and spelling of names in my ar-ticles concerning the von Kármán family. Prior to theCompromise of 1867, to advance in a society domi-nated by the Viennese aristocracy it was advantageousto speak German and use German spelling of one’s sur-name. Maurice’s family at that time used the Germanname Kleinmann, “small man” in English. Following theCompromise, as described above, Hungarian culture ex-perienced an emancipation of sorts. At this time Mauricechanged his surname to the Hungarian Kármán. UponMaurice’s successful tutelage of the Archduke Albrecht,one of the Emperor-King’s cousins, Franz Joseph I of-fered Kármán an award, but he told His Majesty thathe would rather have something that he could handdown to his children. Hence he received hereditary no-bility in 1907, and was permitted to add the prename‘von’ (from) before the geographical location of his es-tate. The Kármán family however owned no estate, theonly property in their possession being a small vineyard,or Szoloskislaki. (Hungarian for vineyard is Szolosk,kis=small). The correct Hungarian name would thus be-come von Szoloskislaki Kármán Tódor, or perhaps theSmall Man, a Gift of God, from the Small Vineyard. Itcomes as no great surprise, and as a relief to all hisstudents and admirers that he chose the simpler Ger-man variant, Theodore von Kármán. Can you imaginethe Von Szoloskislaki Kármán Institute of Fluid Dynam-ics?

Not being a able to say more than Hungarian wordsin the English language (biro, coach, goulash, itsy-bitsy, paprika), I asked my Hungarian-born friend ErvinDeminy for some help. Below is his explanation, whichconfirms mention I once read that the Kármáns origi-nated from the Lake Balaton region. During the ColdWar, Ervin’s family escaped the Transylvanian regionof Romania, formerly part of Hungary, to Budapest.He later apprenticed in Germany as a technician forMercedes-Benz before coming to the US to study atthe Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville,Kentucky. He also studied law and eventually became asenior official in his state’s Department of Labor, wherehe dramatically expanded industrial apprenticeship pro-grams. We are now working together to do this acrossthe southeastern USA.

Ervin Deminy writes:

"Those times were very interesting though, especiallyregarding the official language, having German surenames, etc. All official business was conducted in German,not by choice; the use of the native languages under theAustro-Hungarian empire was not only discouraged butoften times forbidden. So, changing the names had to do alot with politics; having a legacy that identified with your

homeland was also important."Regarding the name: Szoloskislak - today is part of

Balatonboglár, however, the history of this place goes backto the 14th-15th century. In the 16th century it was oneof the largest populated town in the area (small in today’scontext) - the name means: small vineyard homestead -szolos (or, szoloskert) means, vineyard (kert - means gar-den) - kis - means small - lak - is the abbreviated suffixto a noun - from: lakás (living space, house), lakó (renter,occupant) - when you add “lak” to a a name, it can meana certain location, township, homestead, etc; similar to:...ville, like Louisville, Bonnieville, Brownsville, etc.

"There are other abbreviated suffixes in Hungarianthat identify location, besides “lak”

"Szoloskislaki - means “from” Szoloskislak - the “i” atthe end of the pronoun carries the meaning (Example: bu-dapesti (from Budapest) If used as part of someone’s sur-name it is spelled with a capital “Sz” If it is used in asentence to refer to someone as being from that location,it is spelled with lower case “sz”.

"The correct reference to his name (I think) should be:Tódor Kármán von Szoloskislak."

Theodore von Karman’s visit to Turkeyin 1955 and how it was reflected inthe local press

by EMIR ÖNGÜNER, RM 2013

The Cold War period did not only witness uniquediplomatic strategies. Among various politicalsteps the achievements in aviation and aerospace

technology should also be considered as important mile-stones between east and west blocks. NATO countriesestablished such a committee to specify the conditionsand control the associated scientific research. Withinthis scope, Theodore von Karman as the Chairman of theAdvisory Group for Aeronautical Research and Develop-ment (AGARD) of NATO organized a visit to Turkey on9 to 14 January 1955 in order to discuss related topicswith local authorities 1

Von Karman’s personal collections at the Archives ofCalifornia Institute of Technology provide us some use-ful information about his official meetings in Ankara

1His second visit was in 1960 to Istanbul to participate at 10th AGARD Conference on 3.-8. October. The archive files at CalTech contain relatednewspapers as well.






and Istanbul. The files TVK 156.11 and TVK 156.12 en-titled "Articles Which Appeared In Turkish Press Dur-ing Dr. Theodore von Karman’s Visit to Turkey" containsome copies of Turkish newspapers and English transla-tion by Sedat Serdengeçti, who was a Turkish Ph.D. re-searcher in mathematics during that period at Caltech.Serdengeçti gives an interesting translator’s note: “Onthe untrue statements made by the Turkish press, I pur-posely kept the translation as exact as possible to theoriginal.”, though without giving any further elucida-tion.

As a guest of the Turkish government von Karmanarrived in Ankara on 9th January with his staff, metthe officials and discussed on national defense issues ofTurkey. Later he gave a guest lecture at Istanbul Techni-cal University, where he received an honorary doctoratedegree, and discussed with Turkish scientists about theprogress in aerospace research. In one of the interviewshe even claimed that the Turks has invented the rockettechnology in previous centuries. The significant ques-tions of the reporters were on the disasters of jet fight-ers and the scientific collaboration of NATO countries.He also visited the new wind tunnel facility in Ankara,which was apparently under construction at that time,and insisted to include it in actual research activities assoon as possible. In this article we are scrolling back andintroducing an interesting historical event of an aviationpioneer based on 6 official records in chronological or-der 2.

• Zafer, 9 January 1955: Valued Scientist Theodorevon Karman is in Ankara Today

• Vatan, 13 January 1955: An interview with vonKarman, who built the jet planes.

• Hürriyet, 13 January 1955: The Father of ModernAeronautics is in our city: Prof. von Karman willdeliver a lecture today at the Technical University.

• Cumhuriyet, 13 January 1955: In future a tremen-dous underground air base will be constructed inTurkey. It is believed that American aviation pio-neer Dr. von Karman has discussed this topic inAnkara.

• Hürriyet, 14 January 1955: According to ProfessorTh. von Karman Turks Invented Rocket Systems.

• Yeni Istanbul, 14 January 1955: Prof. Theodorevon Karman said that the news about the con-struction of "Underground Air Bases" is nothingbut pure imagination.

The F-86 Sabre, mentioned by von Karman during hisvisit to Turkey, was the iconic US fighter aircraft of the

Korean War (1950-1953) where it performed verysuccessfully against its MiG adversaries. von Karman

appears to be referring developments in late variants suchas the F-86F (shown). U.S. production of the F-86 ceased

at the end of 1956.

Zafer, 9 January 1955:Valued Scientist Theodore von Karman is in

Ankara Today

Professor Theodore von Karman, the chairman of theAdvisory Group for Aeronautical Research and Develop-ment of the United States Air Joint Chiefs of Staff and

2Some minor changes are applied into the text by author. Additionally a personal camera record of Istanbul’s historical parts by von Karman canalso be found in his personal collection (TVK 161.1); starting at 8:20: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivly-55tzU4, last access: 16.08.2020






Chairman of Aeronautical Research and Development ofNATO, will get in touch with scientists in our city. Re-leased by Ministry of National Defense:

As a guest of Ministry of National Defense, Profes-sor Theodore von Karman, Chairman of the AdvisoryGroup for Aeronautical Research and Development ofthe United States Air Joint Chiefs of Staff and Chair-man of the Aeronautical Research and Development ofNATO, will arrive at Ankara on January 9, 1955 (today)at 3:30 p.m. by a private plane. His staff includes Gen-eral Gregory, the United States Military Attaché to Paris,General Adrier and General Molinier, French Air ForceJoint Chiefs of Staff, Mr. Paul Dane, engineer of US. AirForce and Dr. Frank Wattendorf, General Secretary toAeronautical Research Group of NATO.

After meeting Turkish officials in Ankara, Dr. vonKarman and his staff will visit Istanbul and Prof. vonKarman will deliver a lecture at Technical Universityon "Today’s Scientific Developments in Aeronautics". Dr.von Karman is a worldwide known celebrity and has de-voted his life to his research and inventions in aeronau-tics.

Vatan, 13 January 1955:An interview with von Karman, who built the jet

planes:"If the experiments on F-86 jet planes give the ex-

pected results, MiG’s will be left far behind", saidTheodore von Karman.

Theodore von Karman, the Chairman of AGARD andgroup leader of NATO, Aeronautics Research and Devel-opment, arrived in our city at 3:30 p.m. yesterday. Heis accompanied by Fuad Ulug. von Karman was inter-viewed by one of our correspondents and he answeredquestions in the following manner: "I wanted to visitTurkey, valuable member of NATO, for a long time. This

was not possible due to my continuous work and re-search in science. My visit at this time is one of the rou-tine visits I usually make to NATO countries".

At present do you have any plans and inventions forthe improvement of jet planes?

“We are working on new types of jet planes. We arehoping that developments in jet planes will be kept par-allel to present day technical improvements. F-86 is anew type of jet plane, on which tremendous effort is be-ing concentrated at present.”

Would you please compare Russian built MiG withAmerican built jet planes?

(The inventor of jet planes answered with a smile.):"I am happy that I am still alive; otherwise they (Rus-sians) could have claimed the invention of jet planesthemselves, I really wonder. However, MiG’s which werebuilt by German engineers have some superior qualities.For example, Russians do not place any value on the lifeof human beings. For that reason they are not using anysafety measures for their pilots. Therefore, they are ableto fly their planes faster. However, they have not reachedto the level of our jet planes. Certainly if the experimentson F-86 jet planes give the expected results, there will bea great difference between these two."

What do you think of the frequent jet disasters in ourAir Force?

“The same type of disasters are also present in theUS. Air Force. The number of disasters is not greaterthan in other countries. Of course experience in theseplanes is a major factor in knowing how to fly them.When the crash of the jets due to technical difficultiesis eliminated, the number of disasters will certainly bereduced considerably.”

Hürriyet, 13 January 1955:The Father of Modern Aeronautics is in our city:

Prof. von Karman who has said that "Planes Are Ap-proaching Missile Speed" will deliver a lecture todayat the Technical University.

Prof. Theodore von Karman who is known as "the fa-ther of modern aeronautics" and his staff arrived in ourcity after his conference with the members of the Scien-tific Advisory Committee to National Defense Ministry.Prof. von Karman’s visit is interpreted by related circlesas a very important factor in the future of the Turkishaircraft industry.

How to Overcome Airplane Disasters "The fatherof modern aeronautics" who is originally Hungarianand went to the United States in 1926 and then be-came a U.S. citizen, said the following when his opin-ion was asked about the airplane disasters throughout






the world: "When Stevenson invented the locomotive henamed it rocket and for safety he made a signal officerrun in front of the engine. Today, hundreds of years afterits invention, we find a tremendous development andimprovement in locomotives. Airplanes are the same.As soon as our knowledge about them is complete, thenumber of airplane disasters will also decrease".

The Reason for Jet Disasters When he was remindedof frequent jet disasters in the Turkish Air Force andother countries, Prof. von Karman added "First of all, thenumber of jet disasters is decreasing as our technical andespecially experimental knowledge is increasing. Thesedisasters are also frequent in the United States and otherNATO countries. One of the reasons for these disastersmight be material failure. As you may know, jet planesrequire high temperature resistant materials".

Concerning Missile Speed The American scientist hasindicated the prominent future of the aircraft industry,the vast progress in the technical point of view, and alsosaid that flights beyond the sonic speed have createdsocial problems such as disturbing effects of pressurewaves and noise. At present several scientists are work-ing on these problems. Today Prof. von Karman will de-liver a lecture on the rockets at the Technical Universityat 5:30 p.m.

Cumhuriyet, 13 January 1955In future a tremendous underground air base will

be constructed in Turkey. It is believed that Americanaviation pioneer Dr. von Karman has discussed thistopic in Ankara.

Prof. Theodore von Karman who is a worldwideauthority in rockets and guided missiles, Chairman ofAGARD and Chairman of the Research and Developmentoffice of NATO arrived in our city yesterday from Ankaraat 3:30 p.m. with a staff of five persons.

Prof. von Karman had met by General KazımDemirkan at Yesilköy Airfield when some newspaper

men questioned him, he said: "Someday flying saucersand cigars might be a reality". His opinion in this re-spect is quite interesting since he has vast knowledge onthis topic. Prof. von Karman who is the inventor of jetplanes indicated that he is interested in everything thatflies and said:

"Today flying saucers and cigars are considered asa topic in psychology and there is no scientific expla-nation yet. These might be the reflections of the sun’srays from ionosphere, unclaimed radar or observationballoons, or perhaps optical illusions or fantasies of thewind. But the claimed theories are very incomplete andunproven. I do not think that these are secret weaponsof the United States or Soviet Russia as it was rumoredby a French newspaper."

On the other hand, according to rumors in the Turk-ish and American circles, Prof. von Karman came toTurkey to discuss the problem of construction of a verylarge underground air base for planes carrying hydrogenand atomic bombs. This underground base will increasethe strategic importance of Turkey in the NATO chain,since this base will be very close to the Soviet Russianindustrial centers. And it will also be out of danger forbeing destroyed by the largest bombs.

As you may recall, it was discussed in the recentNATO meeting that this organization will consider theuse of atom and hydrogen bombs in case of aggres-sion from USSR. Although Prof. von Karman has avoidedmaking any comment regarding the construction of thisunderground air base, it is persistently rumored that heand Ethem Menderes, the Minister of National Defense,have discussed this problem in Ankara.

Prof. von Karman and his staff will leave for Paristomorrow at 10 a.m. in a private plane.

Hürriyet, 14 January 1955According to Professor Th. von Karman Turks In-

vented Rocket Systems.

Yesterday, during his lecture at Technical Univer-sity in front of 1500 listeners, the father of modernaerodynamics and the inventor of jet planes, ProfessorTheodore von Karman said that Turks used rocket sys-tems in the 13th century for the first time in history.

The great scientist showed a picture of an arrow pro-pelled by gun powder which was taken from an oldTurkish Weapon’s book; on the picture there was Ara-bic script. The propellant was located at the tip of thearrow. Professor Karman indicated that the propellantmight have been used for purposes of both propulsionand setting the target on fire.

The Rocket of Hasan Çelebi Contained Gun PowderFrom the lecture it is deduced that after the 13th century






the Poles have also worked on rockets. During the years1620-1630 a Turk named Hasan Çelebi made a rocketusing black gun powder. The rocket of Hasan Çelebi con-tained about 70 kg of black gun powder. With regard tothe rocket of Hasan Çelebi, Prof. Karman said: "The in-teresting part of the whole situation is the fact that theperson who built the rocket also tried to fly with it" andhe continued "after the year of invention, rockets havebeen used effectively as a weapon from the year 1865and on. During the First World War rockets were usedbut not very effectively. They have been used as anti-aircraft weapons during the Second World War, as bythis time their production cost was low enough. Rock-ets have also been used before and during the Pacificlandings."

Concerning Nuclear Rockets Prof. Karman also indi-cated that today’s rockets are propelled by either liquidor solid propellants; however, in the years to come it isimaginable that rockets will utilize propulsion by meansof nuclear power.

Prof. Karman and his staff will take off by plane forRome this morning.

Yeni Istanbul, 14 January 1955:In Ankara New and Important Decisions are Made

in Regard to Our Air Defense. Prof. Theodore von Kar-man said that the news about the construction of "Un-derground Air Bases" is nothing but pure imagina-tion.

Yesterday Prof. Theodore von Karman, Chairman ofthe Advisory Committee for Research and Developmentto the United States Air Forces Joint Chiefs of Staff, de-livered a lecture at Technical University. On the other

hand there was a rumor in one of the Istanbul morn-ing newspapers that the visit of Prof. Theodore von Kar-man, who is the guest of the Ministry of National De-fense, is related to the construction project of the secretunderground air bases for airplanes carrying atom andhydrogen bombs. In regard to this rumor, when infor-mation was requested, Prof. von Karman said the fol-lowing: "This is completely untrue and unsound newsand the project of this category is pure imagination andridiculous".

The Content of the Lecture of Prof. von Karman: Yes-terday at 5:30 p.m. Dr. von Karman delivered a lectureon the subject of "Problems in Rocket Combustion" at Is-tanbul Technical University. Prof. von Karman, who indi-cated that rockets are the oldest and the simplest meansof propulsion, said: "Rockets are the oldest, because theywere used as early as the 13th century. They are the sim-plest, because there is no need for their propulsion".

Dr. von Karman also indicated that the Turks used ar-rows propelled by the same principle during those daysand he stressed his point by the pictures in an old Turk-ish book written in Arabic. Professor also said that dur-ing the reign of Emperor Murat IV, Hasan Çelebi actuallybuilt rockets.

After the lecture Prof. von Karman said to one of ourfriends the following: "I have come from Paris as a guestof your government. I have come in contact with officialsin Ankara. There were very important decisions madewith regard to defense problems. The success of jointmilitary and scientific work will depend on the outcomeof these decisions. From now on I think there will be fre-quent occasions for me to visit your country. I like verymuch your language and food. I am going back to Paristomorrow".

Prof. von Karman went to the United States in 1930and became the Director of the Guggenheim Laboratoryat the California Institute of Technology. For 19 years heworked on very important research there. He is espe-cially famous for his work on supersonic speed. In 1951he was appointed to his post in NATO and settled inParis. After his lecture Professor received an honorarydegree "Doctor Honoris Causa" during the ceremony inhis honor at university. Prof. von Karman, whose sci-entific and technical contributions are well known theworld over, indicated his gratitude and promised his per-sonal help to the students who are seriously interestedin studying in the United States. After the ceremony acocktail party was held and Prof. von Karman met vari-ous faculty members.






New book by Kent Misegades

Newsletter readers will be familiar with Kent Mis-egades’ authoritative and indeed fascinating ac-counts of the life of Theodore von Karman. But

they may not be aware of his longterm interest in sec-ondary school education in the United States and specif-ically the general lack of training in the practical arts.This book is his contribution to the subject and is heav-ily influenced by his years at Dornier AG and from hisGerman-born wife, Ulli. The following is a review byRandall Murphree in afaJournal, Aug. 2020, afaJour-nal.com.

This practical introduction to the industrial arts is thecreation of Kent Misegades, an engineer with more than40 years’ experience. The North Carolina author and hiswife lamented the demise of many of the basic skillsonce taught at the high school level to prepare studentsfor the working world. Hence, he set about commpilingGuide to Shop and Engineering: For Secondary SchoolStudents, a resource to fill that gap. The introduction istitled “So, You Want to Learn How to Make Things andFix Things?” The book is 219 pages – 17 chapters filledwith exercises from fun projects such as making a gi-ant paper airplane to practical ones such as building aworkbench.

In addition, Misegades includes short biographi-cal sketches of many American inventors and en-trepreneurs. For example, he writes about ventriloquistJeff Dunham, who taught himself how to make his owndummies. He tells of David Goode who launched one ofthe nation’s most successful snow and water ski compa-nies in 1975 when he was only 19 years old. The book isadaptable to any educational environment – Christian,public, private, or home schools. Available at lulu.com.


m www.vki-alumni.org v +32-2-35 99 600 B [email protected] Technical/Manuscript Editor: Mario Carbonaro, using Mehmet Mersinligil’s template B [email protected]

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Newsletter of the VKI Alumni Association · 2020. 10. 19. · 31th Newsletter of the VKI Alumni Association A new VKI Faculty Member: Georg May by GEORG MAY, VKI ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR