Theodore Von Kármán (redirected from Theodor von Karman)

Kármán, Theodore Von 

Born May 11, 1881, in Budapest; died May 7, 1963, in Aachen. Scientist in mechanics.

Kármán studied at the Royal Technical University of Budapest from 1898 to 1902 and later at the University of Gottingen. He became a professor and director of the Aeronautics Institute of the University of Aachen in 1913. From 1930 to 1949 he was the director of the Guggenheim Aeronautics Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. Kármán’s works dealt with aircraft design, applied mathematics, the strength of materials, the theory of elasticity and plasticity, structural mechanics, aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, and thermodynamics. As a scientific leader he participated in the construction of many technical devices: aircraft, helicopters, rockets, and suspension bridges, as well as the first supersonic wind tunnels and ballistic installations. Kármán was a member of the Royal Society of London and other academies of science and scientific societies.

WORKS

Collected Works, vols. 1–4. London. 1956.
The Wind and Beyond: An Autobiography. Boston, 1967.