biography
| name: |
Kármán, Theodore von
|
pronunciation:
[kah(r)man]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1881–1963)
|
| biography:
| Physicist and aeronautical engineer, born in Budapest, Hungary. While spending most of his early career at German educational institutions, he advised many governments and firms on issues of aerodynamics and applied mechanics. Having visited the USA on two occasions, he came again in 1930 to direct the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, and when the Nazis forced him to resign his post in Germany, he stayed in the USA and remained as the director until 1949. He was a founder of the Aerojet Engineering Corp (1942), the RAND Corp (1948), and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and gave direction to the early stages of the American rocket and space programmes. He received the first National Medal of Science in 1963. |
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