Teachers and Texts

2.1 Stability and Control Educators

The gap between aeronautical theory and stability and control practice has never entirely closed. However, the number of aeronautical engineers trained in stability and control theory has grown greatly since the subject started to be taught in the aeronautical engineering schools that sprang up starting around 1920.

By 1922, there were already five U. S. universities with programs in aeronautical engi­neering: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan, the University of Washington, and Stanford University. In that same year, Drs. Alexander Klemin and Collins Bliss of New York University offered ele­mentary aerodynamics as an option in mechanical engineering, launching the aeronautical program there. Other U. S. colleges and universities, too numerous to mention, followed in later years. By 1997, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) had no fewer than 145 student branches in colleges and universities around the world.

Otto C. Koppen was an aviation pioneer who taught airplane stability and control while continuing as a designer of new airplanes. William F. Milliken, Jr. (1947) had this to say about Koppen’s contributions to his own field of airplane dynamics:

Since about 1930 the course of airplane dynamics in this country has been widely and continuously influenced by the research and teachings of Otto C. Koppen. His theoretical investigations, wind tunnel work (oscillators), and achievements in airplane design are now well known. For years his course in stability and control at MIT was unique in its treatments of the complete dynamics, and many current trends in design and research may be traced directly to his work as an educator….

European educators were busy as well. At the time (1911) he wrote Stability in Aviation, G. H. Bryan was a mathematics professor at the University ofNorth Wales. Twenty problems for further research may be found at the end of that book. Airplane stability and control was soon taught widely in Great Britain.

In 1920, the first edition of Leonard Bairstow’s famous book Applied Aerodynamics appeared. That year he was appointed Professor of Aerodynamics at Imperial College. In 1945, Ernest F. Relf and William J. Duncan, both already identified with airplane stability and control, served on a group that established the Cranfield College of Aeronautics, for postgraduate education. Relf became principal, and Duncan became a legendary Cranfield professor.

In Japan, the late Professor Kyuichiro Washizu (1921-1981) played somewhat the same role as did Otto Koppen in the United States. Washizu introduced the concept of airplane stability and control to Japan, at the Department of Aeronautics, the University of Tokyo. His students spread all over Japan, eventually leading stability and control education and research in that country Pioneer stability and control educators in continental Europe were the Belgian Professor Frederic Charles Haus, the Dutch Professor Otto H. Gerlach, and the German Professor Karl-H. Doetsch.

Airplane stability and control is still being taught in universities around the world, bring­ing fresh talent into the field. Stability and control research is carried on in many of these schools, usually as graduate programs. Governmental and commercial research institutions are important contributors, as well.

Photographs of some stability and control educators and engineers who are mentioned in the text appear in Figure 2.1.