Paco Axel Lagerstrom (February 24, 1914 – February 16, 1989) was an applied mathematician and aeronautical engineer. He was trained formally in mathematics, but worked for much of his career in aeronautical applications. He was known for work in applying the method of

asymptotic expansion In mathematics, an asymptotic expansion, asymptotic series or Poincaré expansion (after Henri Poincaré) is a formal series of functions which has the property that truncating the series after a finite number of terms provides an approximation to ...

to fluid mechanics problems.Narasimha, R. (2004
''Divide, conquer and unify''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

432(7019), 807. Several of his works have become classics, including "Matched Asymptotic Expansions: Ideas And Techniques".Lagerstrom, P. A. (1988) Matched Asymptotic Expansions: Ideas And Techniques, Springer.

Biography

He was born on February 24, 1914, in

Oskarshamn Oskarshamn is a coastal city and the seat of Oskarshamn Municipality, Kalmar County, Sweden with 17,258 inhabitants in 2010. History Etymology Döderhultsvik was the original name before a town charter was granted in 1856. The name was then chang ...

, Sweden. Lagerstrom earned bachelor's and master's degrees, in 1935 and 1939 respectively, at the

University of Stockholm Stockholm University ( sv, Stockholms universitet) is a public research university in Stockholm, Sweden, founded as a college in 1878, with university status since 1960. With over 33,000 students at four different faculties: law, humanities, soci ...

. He then came to America as a graduate student at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

, earning a PhD in 1942 in mathematics under

Salomon Bochner Salomon Bochner (20 August 1899 – 2 May 1982) was an Austrian mathematician, known for work in mathematical analysis, probability theory and differential geometry. Life He was born into a Jewish family in Podgórze (near Kraków), then Aus ...

with a dissertation entitled "Measure and Integral in Partially Ordered Spaces". During this time, Lagerstrom was also a mathematics instructor. He left Princeton in 1944 to work briefly at

Bell Aircraft The Bell Aircraft Corporation was an American aircraft manufacturer, a builder of several types of fighter aircraft for World War II but most famous for the Bell X-1, the first supersonic aircraft, and for the development and production of man ...

in Niagara Falls, New York until 1945, after which he worked for a similarly brief period at

Douglas Aircraft The Douglas Aircraft Company was an American aerospace manufacturer based in Southern California. It was founded in 1921 by Donald Wills Douglas Sr. and later merged with McDonnell Aircraft in 1967 to form McDonnell Douglas; it then operated as ...

in Santa Monica.''GALCIT: The First 75 Years''
While he had already published significant results in pure mathematics,McMillan, B. and Lagerstrom, P. (1945

Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society The ''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society'' is a quarterly mathematical journal published by the American Mathematical Society. Scope It publishes surveys on contemporary research topics, written at a level accessible to non-experts. I ...

51, 251-258.Lagerstrom, P. (1945
''A proof of a theorem on commutative matrices''

51, 535-536. he was, by this time, firmly interested in its applications to fluid dynamic and aerodynamic problems. In 1946, Lagerstrom was recruited by Hans Liepmann to the

Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory The Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT), was a research institute created in 1926, at first specializing in aeronautics research. In 1930, Hungarian scientist Theodore von Kármán accepted the dire ...

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

. He was later promoted to Professor of Aeronautics in 1952 and Professor of Applied Mathematics in 1967, having departed only briefly to the

University of Paris , image_name = Coat of arms of the University of Paris.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of Arms , latin_name = Universitas magistrorum et scholarium Parisiensis , motto = ''Hic et ubique terrarum'' (Latin) , mottoeng = Here and a ...

in 1960-1961 as visiting professor on a Guggenheim Fellowship. He died on February 16, 1989.http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/609/2/Obituaries.pdf

Publications

His book "Laminar flow theory", initially published in 1964 in the Theory of Laminar flows, edited by F.K.Moore, is still considered as the standard textbook for fluid mechanics. * * * *

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lagerstrom, Paco 20th-century American mathematicians Fluid dynamicists Swedish mathematicians 20th-century American engineers 1989 deaths 1914 births Swedish emigrants to the United States