Ernst Rudolph Georg Eckert (September 13, 1904 – July 8, 2004) was an Austrian American engineer and scientist who advanced the film cooling technique for aeronautical engines. He earned his Diplom Ingenieur and doctorate in 1927 and 1931, respectively, and

habilitated Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

in 1938.Pfender E (2007) ''Ernst R. G. Eckert'', in "Memorial Tributes: National Academy of Engineering", Vol. 11, 108-113. Eckert worked as a jet engine scientist at the Aeronautical Research Institute in

Braunschweig Braunschweig () or Brunswick ( , from Low German ''Brunswiek'' , Braunschweig dialect: ''Bronswiek'') is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, north of the Harz Mountains at the farthest navigable point of the river Oker, which connects it to the ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

, then via

Operation Paperclip Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from the former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment after the end of World War ...

, began jet propulsion research in 1945 at

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) is a United States Air Force base and census-designated place just east of Dayton, Ohio, in Greene and Montgomery counties. It includes both Wright and Patterson Fields, which were originally Wilbur Wr ...

. In 1951, Eckert joined the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

in the department of

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, ...

. Eckert published over 550 scientific papers and books. The Eckert number in

fluid dynamics In physics and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids— liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including ''aerodynamics'' (the study of air and other gases in motion) a ...

was named after him. In 1995 the National Academy of Engineering honored Eckert with its thirteenth Founders Award. Eckert's son-in-law

Horst Henning Winter Horst Henning Winter is a German American chemical engineer, educator and researcher. He is a distinguished professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and was the executive editor of ''Rheologica Acta'' from 1989 to 2016, where he has ...

, a specialist in rheology, is professor at UMass Amherst.

References and notes

External links

Short biography of Ernst R. G. Eckert
1904 births 2004 deaths American aerospace engineers American science writers American technology writers German emigrants to the United States German people of World War II 20th-century German physicists NASA people Scientists from Prague Engineering educators University of Minnesota faculty Fluid dynamicists Aerodynamicists Czech Technical University in Prague alumni German aerospace engineers Operation Paperclip 20th-century Austrian engineers 20th-century American physicists 20th-century American engineers {{fluiddynamics-stub