Ludwig Prandtl, an engineer by training, was endowed with rare vision for the understanding of physical phenomena and his unusual ability to put them into simple mathematical form. Prandtl was a most able researcher and teacher, becoming professor of mechanics at the University of Hanover in 1901. From 1904 to 1953, he served as professor of applied mechanics at the University of Gottingen, where he established a school of aerodynamics and hydrodynamics, which was recognized throughout the world. Prandtl's discovery of the boundary layer in 1904 led to an understanding of skin friction and drag, developing ways in which streamlining reduces wing drag. Following similar work by Frederick Lanchester, but carried out independently, Prandtl's initial work on wing theory elucidated the process of flow over an airfoil of finite span and is known as the Lanchester-Prandtl wing theory. Subsequently, Prandtl made decisive advances in boundary layer and wing theories, and his work became the basic material of aerodynamics. He later contributed the Prandtl-Glaubert rule for subsonic airflow to describe compressibility effects of air at high speeds, and also made important advances in developing theories of supersonic flow and turbulence. Prandtl gave modern wing theory its practical mathematical form. He is considered the father of aerodynamic theory, for there is hardly a part of it to which he did not contribute. Many of its fundamental concepts originated in his fertile mind.
Inducted in 1992.
Portrait Location: Hall of Fame Hallway