Walter Guido Vincenti (April 20, 1917 – October 11, 2019) was an American engineer who worked in the field of

aeronautics Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of air flight–capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. The British Royal Aeronautical Society identifies ...

, designing planes that could fly at

hypersonic speed In aerodynamics, a hypersonic speed is one that exceeds 5 times the speed of sound, often stated as starting at speeds of Mach 5 and above. The precise Mach number at which a craft can be said to be flying at hypersonic speed varies, since i ...

. He was elected as a member of several scientific societies, including the

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is a professional society for the field of aerospace engineering. The AIAA is the U.S. representative on the International Astronautical Federation and the International Council of ...

and

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

. He won several prestigious awards, such as the

Leonardo da Vinci Medal The Leonardo da Vinci Medal is the highest award of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), and was first given in 1962. In general this award is granted annually to scholars who have contributed outstandingly to the history of technology ...

and the

Daniel Guggenheim Medal The Daniel Guggenheim Medal is an American engineering award, established by Daniel and Harry Guggenheim. The medal is considered to be one of the greatest honors that can be presented for a lifetime of work in aeronautics. Recipients have include ...

Early life and education

Walter Guido Vincenti was born on April 20, 1917 in Baltimore, Maryland to parents Agnes and Guido Vincenti, emigrants from Italy. He was one of five children. His family later moved to

Pasadena Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. Its ...

, California, which is where he grew up. His interest in airplanes began at age ten when, in 1927,

Charles Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, and activist. On May 20–21, 1927, Lindbergh made the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris, a distance o ...

made a historic nonstop flight from

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

. He began constructing

model aircraft A model aircraft is a small unmanned aircraft. Many are replicas of real aircraft. Model aircraft are divided into two basic groups: flying and non-flying. Non-flying models are also termed static, display, or shelf models. Aircraft manufactur ...

afterwards. Like his two elder brothers, he attended

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

for his undergraduate degree. He then completed two years of graduate work at Stanford in their mechanical engineering track with an emphasis in

Career

Shortly before finishing his graduate degree, he accepted a job offer from Russell G. Robinson to work at the

Ames Laboratory Ames National Laboratory, formerly Ames Laboratory, is a United States Department of Energy United States Department of Energy national laboratories, national laboratory located in Ames, Iowa, and affiliated with Iowa State University. It is a t ...

. During World War II, he and his colleagues were initially exempted from the draft due to their research on military-grade technology. The policy was changed partway through the war, and he was drafted into the Navy. His assignment at the Navy, however, was to stay at Ames Laboroatory and continue working on the development of a supersonic

swept-wing A swept wing is a wing that angles either backward or occasionally forward from its root rather than in a straight sideways direction. Swept wings have been flown since the pioneer days of aviation. Wing sweep at high speeds was first investigat ...

design. He was made a

chief petty officer A chief petty officer (CPO) is a senior non-commissioned officer in many navies and coast guards. Canada "Chief petty officer" refers to two ranks in the Royal Canadian Navy. A chief petty officer 2nd class (CPO2) (''premier maître de deuxi� ...

. He used the prize money from the Rockefeller Public Service Award to take a year-long sabbatical from Ames Laboratory and travel to

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

. There, he studied the physics and chemistry of gases at high temperatures. When he returned to California in 1956, Stanford had decided to start a aeronautical engineering department within its

School of Engineering Engineering education is the activity of teaching knowledge and principles to the professional practice of engineering. It includes an initial education (bachelor's and/or master's degree), and any advanced education and specializations that ...

; they offered Vincenti a professorship within the new department. The Soviet launch of

Sputnik 1 Sputnik 1 (; see § Etymology) was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for t ...

the following year caused a massive influx of funding into the nascent department by the US government. Some of his accomplishments at Stanford include overseeing the construction of a hypersonic

wind tunnel Wind tunnels are large tubes with air blowing through them which are used to replicate the interaction between air and an object flying through the air or moving along the ground. Researchers use wind tunnels to learn more about how an aircraft ...

in 1965 and authoring ''Introduction to Physical Gas Dynamics'' (1965) and '' What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History'' (1990). From 1970–1976 he was a co-editor of the ''

Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics ''Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research on fluid mechanics. It is published once a year by Annual Reviews and the editors are Parviz Moin and Howard Stone. As of 2022, ''Journal Citation Rep ...

''.

Awards and honors

In 1951 he was made a fellow of the

. He received a Rockefeller Public Service Award in 1956 for his work on

heat shield In thermodynamics, heat is defined as the form of energy crossing the boundary of a thermodynamic system by virtue of a temperature difference across the boundary. A thermodynamic system does not ''contain'' heat. Nevertheless, the term is al ...

s for spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. In recognition of his work teaching undergraduates, Stanford gave him the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award in 1983. He was elected to the

in 1987. The

Society for the History of Technology The Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) is the primary professional society for historians of technology. SHOT was founded in 1958 in the United States, and it has since become an international society with members "from some thirty-five ...

awarded him the

in 1998. In 2016 he was awarded the

for his career in the field of

. In 2019, he received the Stanford Engineering Heroes Award, which is the highest award given by the Stanford University School of Engineering.

Personal life and death

He married Joyce , a painter, in 1947. They had a son and daughter together. Vincenti died of

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severity ...

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was estab ...

, California on October 11, 2019. He was 102 years old.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vincenti, Walter G 1917 births 2019 deaths American people of Italian descent American aerospace engineers American centenarians Men centenarians Stanford University School of Engineering alumni People from Baltimore United States Navy personnel of World War II Stanford University School of Engineering faculty Annual Reviews (publisher) editors