Joe F. Thompson is an American aerospace engineer. Thompson is the William L. Giles Distinguished Professor at the

Mississippi State University Mississippi State University for Agriculture and Applied Science, commonly known as Mississippi State University (MSU), is a public land-grant research university adjacent to Starkville, Mississippi. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Unive ...

and Director, DoD Programming Environment & Training Center. He is known for his contributions to the fields of computational fluid dynamics, especially in the area of

grid generation Mesh generation is the practice of creating a mesh, a subdivision of a continuous geometric space into discrete geometric and topological cells. Often these cells form a simplicial complex. Usually the cells partition the geometric input domain ...

. He, with Z. U. A. Warsi and C. Wayne Mastin, wrote the classic book on grid generation titled ''Numerical Grid Generation: Foundations and Applications''.

Education and career

A native of

Grenada Grenada ( ; Grenadian Creole French: ) is an island country in the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea at the southern end of the Grenadines island chain. Grenada consists of the island of Grenada itself, two smaller islands, Carriacou and Pe ...

, Thompson received his Bachelor's degree in Physics in 1961 and his Master's degree in

Aerospace Engineering Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is si ...

in 1963 from Mississippi State University. He received his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from

Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part of ...

in 1971.

Honors and awards

During his career Thompson has received many prizes and awards, including *

ASEE The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) is a non-profit member association, founded in 1893, dedicated to promoting and improving engineering and engineering technology education. The purpose of ASEE is the advancement of education ...

Southeastern Research Unit Award for Research, 1975 *Outstanding faculty Award, College of Engineering, Mississippi State University, 1998 *HEADWAE Award from Mississippi Legislature, 1989 *Commanders Award for Public Service, Department of the Army, 1992 * AIAA Aerodynamics Award, 1992 *Faculty Achievement Award for Service, Mississippi State University, 1996 Thompson is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics since 2004. He is also a member of SIAM, the IEEE Computer Society, and the Mississippi Academy of Sciences.

Books

Thompson has authored and edited several books on grid generation: *Thompson, J. F. (Ed.), ''Numerical Grid Generation'', North-Holland, 1982. *Thompson, J. F., Warsi, Z. U. A., Mastin, C. W., ''Numerical Grid Generation: Foundations and Applications'', North-Holland, 1985. *Sengupta, S., Hauser, J., Eisenman, P. R. Thompson, J. F., (Eds.), ''Numerical Grid Generation in Computational Fluid Dynamics '88'', Pineridge Press, 1988. *Thompson, J. F., Soni, B. K., Weatherhill, N. (Eds.) ''Handbook for Grid Generation'', CRC Press, 1999.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, Joe F. Mississippi State University alumni Georgia Tech alumni Computational fluid dynamicists American aerospace engineers Mississippi State University faculty Fellows of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Living people Year of birth missing (living people) People from Grenada, Mississippi Engineers from Mississippi