Joseph Szydlowski (originally Józef Szydłowski; November 21, 1896, Skryhiczyn (in

Chełm County Chełm County ( pl, powiat chełmski) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Lublin Voivodeship, eastern Poland, on the border with Ukraine. It was established on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local g ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

), – July 16, 1988 in Israel), was a Polish- Israeli aircraft engine designer who founded

Turbomeca Safran Helicopter Engines, previously known as Turbomeca, is a French manufacturer of low- and medium-power gas turbine turboshaft engines for helicopters. The company also produces gas turbine engines for aircraft and missiles, as well as turbin ...

in France.

Biography and career

At the time of Szydlowski's birth

Chełm Chełm (; uk, Холм, Kholm; german: Cholm; yi, כעלם, Khelm) is a city in southeastern Poland with 60,231 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is located to the south-east of Lublin, north of Zamość and south of Biała Podlaska, some ...

was part of Lublin Governorate in the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

. He was taken prisoner by the German Empire during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. He started working in Germany and applied for his first

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

s in 1920. With the rise of

Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) i ...

he emigrated to France in 1930. During the 1930s, he designed an unusual supercharger compressor which was used by the

Hispano-Suiza 12Y The Hispano-Suiza 12Y was an aircraft engine produced by Hispano-Suiza for the French Air Force before the Second World War. The 12Y became the primary French 1,000 hp (750 kW) class engine and was used in a number of famous aircraft, i ...

in the Dewoitine D.520 fighter. It utilized an axial compressor rather than the usual

centrifugal compressor Centrifugal compressors, sometimes called impeller compressors or radial compressors, are a sub-class of dynamic axisymmetric work-absorbing turbomachinery. They achieve pressure rise by adding energy to the continuous flow of fluid through t ...

that was predominant at the time in aircraft engines. He founded Turbomeca in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, 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), ma ...

in 1938 and built the company on licensed production during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. In June 1940, when Germany invaded France he evacuated his company to Saint-Pé-de-Bigorre in southern France. Once the war was over he developed small

turbine engine A gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a type of continuous flow internal combustion engine. The main parts common to all gas turbine engines form the power-producing part (known as the gas generator or core) and are, in the directi ...

s for

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

s. Turbomeca became a major supplier of

turboshaft engines, providing 30% of the non-United States market according to the company. After the

Six-day war The Six-Day War (, ; ar, النكسة, , or ) or June War, also known as the 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states (primarily Egypt, Syria, and Jordan) from 5 to 10 Ju ...

, in response to Charles De Gaulle's embargo on Israel, Szydlowski established a factory for the production of jet engines, Beit Shemesh motors, in Israel. In 1984, Szydlowski received an honorary PhD from the Technion.

References

Biography of Joseph Szydlowski
1896 births 1988 deaths Polish aerospace engineers Jews from the Russian Empire 20th-century French inventors French people of Polish-Jewish descent 20th-century Israeli inventors Jet engine pioneers 20th-century Polish inventors {{poland-business-bio-stub