alt Hacker NewsI'm an avgeek with a MSc in engineering. I vaguely recall the name Bleriot from physics, although I have no clue what he actually did. I have never even heard the names Busemann, Prandtl, or Whitcomb.
I'm an avgeek with a MSc in engineering. I vaguely recall the name Bleriot from physics, although I have no clue what he actually did. I have never even heard the names Busemann, Prandtl, or Whitcomb.
I find this super surprising, because even I who don't do aerodynamics I still know about thes guys.
Bleriot was a french aviation pioneer and not a physicist. He built the first monoplane. Busemann was an aerodynamicist who invented wing sweep and also did important work on supersonic flight. Prandtl is known for research on lift distribution over wings, wingtip vortices, induced drag and he basically invented much of the theory about wings. Whitcomb gave his name to the Whitcomb area rule, although Otto Frenzl had come up with it earlier during WWII.