Aerospace Education and Research

at Princeton University

1942–1975

Alexander J. Smits∗and Courtland D. Perkins†

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace EngineeringPrinceton University

Princeton, New Jersey 08544-0710

Abstract

A brief account is given of the history of aerospaceeducation and research at Princeton University forthe period 1942 to 1975. This period covers theinitial establishment of the Aeronautical Engineer-ing in 1942, its move to Forrestal Campus, and theeventual return to Main Campus.

1 Introduction

Engineering began at Princeton with the establish-ment of a Civil Engineering program in 1875 [1].Fourteen years later, Cyrus Fogg Brackett organizedwhat was apparently the nation’s first program inElectrical Engineering. It was not until 1921, how-ever, when Arthur Maurice Green Jr. was asked toorganize the School of Engineering as an educationalunit to be administered by a Dean of Engineering.In his plan for the new School, Dean Greene inau-gurated undergraduate programs in Chemical, Geo-logical and Mechanical Engineering. A program inBasic Engineering was added in 1935.

The classes in ME “...were held in the old Schoolof Science, with a makeshift laboratory in a boilerhouse across Washington Road, until the JohnC. Green Engineering Building was constructed in1928. Starting with only two young assistants in me-chanical engineering, Dean Greene taught over halfthe courses in the department in addition to per-forming his administrative duties. Louis F. Rahmand Alfred E. Sorenson joined the slowly expandingdepartment in 1926, Lewis F. Moody as professor offluid mechanics and machine design arrived in 1930.

During the Depression, graduating seniors, unableto obtain employment, returned for graduate study,spurring the development of both the engine and hy-draulics laboratories. By 1941, when Dean Greeneretired and was succeeded as dean and chairman by

∗Fellow, AIAA†Fellow, AIAA

Kenneth H. Condit, the Department of MechanicalEngineering was both well staffed and equipped, per-mitting it to acquit itself well during the hectic waryears when year-round teaching of military and civil-ian students was the order of the day” [2].

Dean Condit and other members of the Princetonengineering community expressed an interest in in-troducing aeronautical engineering into the School ofEngineering curricula and started a search for someoutside expert who could advise whether or how thismight be done [3]. Gordon Rentschler, a PrincetonTrustee and an important executive in the aeronau-tical industry, exerted some pressure on Condit topersevere. He discussed this idea with a former col-league at McGraw-Hill, S. Paul Johnston, then Edi-tor of Aviation magazine. He then decided to inviteanother former colleague, Daniel Clemens Sayre (fig-ure 1), at that time Associate Administrator of theCivil Aeronautics Board, to make a two month sur-vey. An airplane buff and an MIT graduate, Sayrewas a man of many talents. He accepted this assign-ment and thus started the remarkable relationshipbetween Sayre and Princeton that profoundly influ-enced the Engineering School in the following years.

2 Founding of the AeronauticsDepartment

Dan Sayre made his study in the summer of 1942,and recommended to the Dean that Princeton cre-ate a new, free-standing Department of AeronauticalEngineering, independent of the Department of Me-chanical Engineering. He so impressed the Univer-sity and the faculty of the Engineering School thathis recommendation was accepted with enthusiasm.The new Department was established with Sayre asa Full Professor and the first Chairman. At the out-set he was the entire faculty, and the Department[Sayre] had a desk on the balcony of the MechanicalEngineering Laboratory. This situation didn’t lastlong. Dan wanted a building of his own, but he had

no resources or space to build one.Sayre sought funds to build some cinder block

buildings on the lower campus just above LakeCarnegie and in back of the Observatory where smallbuildings like this were permitted. He approachedlocal wealthy friends of the University and eventu-ally was able to interest Mrs. Edgar Palmer andher sister Helen Hayes Watson who donated $50,000.Two small cinder block buildings were built veryrapidly providing Sayre with office space for his staffand some area for research operations. He then setabout acquiring a faculty and a small staff to manthe Department and also signed up some undergrad-uates and a few graduate students to open the fran-chise.

Sayre had his eyes on two new faculty appoint-ments for which slots had been approved in the ini-tial agreement. He had heard through the MITgrapevine of a remarkable engineer at Sikorsky Air-craft who was interested in an academic career.Alexander Alexandrovitch Nikolsky, a Russian aris-tocrat had escaped the revolution while a navalcadet serving on a ship in Vladivostok harbor. Heand a few other cadets made their way to Japan,then Cairo, and finally Paris. In Paris, Nikolsky en-rolled in the Sorbonne where he received a diplomain engineering. He then took a job as a seamanon a freighter bound for New York. On arrival hejumped ship and continued on to Boston. The Rus-sian emigree community came to his aid and helpedto enroll him in the Aeronautical Engineering De-partment of MIT. On graduating with an M.S. de-gree, Igor Sikorsky, another Russian emigree whowas looking after his young countrymen, hired him.Nikolsky rose rapidly in Sikorsky’s engineering de-partment and was Chief of the Structures Depart-ment when Dan Sayre approached him.

Nikolsky came to Princeton in 1943 as the sec-ond appointment of the new Department. He taughtcourses in aircraft structures at the undergraduatelevel and both taught and did research with his grad-uate students on predicting loads on rotor blades atthe graduate level. The dozen or so students couldchoose between six undergraduate and eight gradu-ate courses covering the principles of aerodynamicsand aircraft structure and design [4]. Nikolsky be-came nationally known as an expert on helicoptersand wrote a famous book on the subject entitled“Helicopter Analysis.” A slight, wiry, friendly man,he was the life of any party and was loved by hismany students [3].

3 The War Years

When the School of Engineering was founded in1921, the trustees set a limit of 400 for enrollment ofundergraduates working toward the degree of Bache-

lor of Science in Engineering. There were fewer than100 student engineers at that time, but by the timeDean Greene retired in 1940, the School had reachedan enrollment of 394 [1].

Then came the war, and enrollment fluctuated allthe way from 85 to 600. During part of that pe-riod, the faculty of the School conducted trainingcourses for Army Signal Corps technicians, for ArmySpecialized Training Program engineers, for variousindividuals enrolled under the Engineering, Scienceand Managament War Training Program, for NavyV-12 students, and for some 1000 Naval officers be-ing prepared for radar operation and supervision.The teaching load went through cycles of overloadand underload. Recruiting of staff in the fields ofscience and engineering became difficult, impossi-ble, and then to all intents, illegal. Materials disap-peared, technical equipment had to be improvised orsimply done without [1]. Aeronautical Engineering,with a pocketful of plans for a staff and for labora-tories, struggled along as a two-man faculty to teachaeronautical courses as were required.

4 The Post-War Period

The department came into the post-war era witha small nucleus and some useful experience, andbecause of the wartime restrictions on hiring, withthe majority of its basic faculty positions still openfor young people who had themselves helped bringabout new developments in jet propulsion and su-personic flight that had revolutionized aviation.

When Sayre set out in 1943 to hire the thirdfaculty member of the Department, he approachedCourtland Perkins, a flight test engineer who wasthen at the Army Air Force’s Aircraft Laboratoryat Wright Field, where he directed research in sta-bility and control. Perkins (figure 1) felt it was notthe time to leave Wright Field where the war wasgenerating enormous growth in aeronautical technol-ogy, but in early 1945 he accepted the University’soffer of an Associate Professorship with tenure. Im-mediately after V-J Day, Perkins resigned his civilservice position in the Army Air Corps, and movedto Princeton, arriving in October 1945.

At this time, almost all of the students were re-turning veterans with widely varying backgrounds,but with an overwhelming desire to graduate in thevery shortest time. Special programs were devel-oped to satisfy their desires and the University re-quirements. One sophomore who stayed was DavidC. Hazen who, after he received his B.S. and M.S.degrees became first a Research Assistant, then anAssistant Professor, and ultimately a Full Professorin the department.

Hazen was one of the people helping Perkins tobuild an instructional wind tunnel, using a large

Figure 1: Daniel Sayre and Courtland Perkins.

open pit for a return arm of a wind tunnel, leavingthe test section at floor level. A coal mine exhaustfan, designed to absorb 150 horsepower, was usedto power the wind tunnel. With a 3′ × 5′ throat, aspeed at the test section of about 120 mph was pos-sible. Together with a surplus motor and a controlsystem, and a six component balance it turned outto be a very useful and important tool.

The Aeronautical Engineering Department at thistime was housed in Sayre’s cinder block buildingson the lower campus. All the undergraduate courseswere given in the main Engineering Building, thenlocated on Washington Road, about a mile away.There were several sponsored research programs be-ing undertaken by the Department, including one inhelicopter rotor de-icing under Sayre, and a theo-retical program on rotor loads by Nikolsky. Perkinsargued strongly for developing two important fields,one in the theoretical aerodynamics and another inpropulsion, with emphasis on Jet Propulsion. Sayreand Nikolsky agreed readily and, with help fromPresident Dodds, had the two slots approved by theUniversity and the Engineering School.

For the Theoretical Aerodynamics position,Perkins approached a friend from MIT and WrightField days, Lester Lees, then on the staff of theNACA at Langley Field. According to Perkins [3],Lees was an introvert but everyone recognized himas a genius obviously on his way to be becominga top-flight theoretician. His major research inter-est was in theoretical aerodynamics with emphasison the character of laminar and turbulent bound-ary layers. In particular, Lees had became one ofthe country’s authorities on compressible flow, andPerkins offered him a position as an Assistant Pro-fessorship. The work going on in fluid dynamics in

the Princeton Physics Department, which includedWalker Bleakney doing experimental work with hisshock tube, and the work being done by Dr. Laden-berg on interferometry also interested him. Leesjoined the faculty in 1946. He brought with himseveral of his colleagues from NACA, including AbeKahane and Jerry Schaffer. Importantly, he alsobrought with him an ONR contract for research inhigh speed fluid dynamics. He helped start the ex-perimental work in supersonic flow that later wasthe heart the Princeton Gas Dynamics Laboratory.He was promoted to the rank of Associate Professorin short order, but some years later, when his nextpromotion was held up at Princeton, CalTech of-fered him a Full Professorship. Lees took it, and thedepartment lost one of its most important facultymembers in 1954.

While these negotiations were underway, a searchwas started for a candidate to fill a position in thefield of Jet Propulsion. At that time the major aca-demic program in Propulsion, and in particular JetPropulsion, was at CalTech under the leadership ofvon Karman. Perkins called von Karman who sug-gested Joseph V. Charyk, a Canadian who had re-ceived his B.S. degree from the University of Albertaand then went to CalTech for his graduate program.Joe received his Ph.D. in the spring of 1946, and hehad a strong interest in propulsion.

Joe came to Princeton to meet Dan Sayre, Nikol-sky, and Dean Condit, and he agreed to an appoint-ment as an Assistant Professor and moved to Prince-ton in the fall. He rose rapidly to Associate Pro-fessor, became a first class teacher-scholar, helpedstabilize the new Ph.D. program (started in 1946[5]), and established projects in propulsion that ledultimately to the organization of the Guggenheim

Propulsion Laboratories.In the early 1950s, under intensifying Cold War

pressure, and the demands of the Korean War effort,the U.S. greatly accelerated its missile and spaceprograms and industry started actively recruitingstaff for new programs. University faculties were aprime target. In 1955, Charyk finally succumbed toa very significant offer made by Lockheed throughits powerful Board member, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) PeteQuesada. This was another great loss to the De-partment. Not long after this Charyk, with others,broke away from Lockheed and formed a companywhich after several evolutions became the Aeroneu-tronics Division of Ford. Several years later he leftFord to become the U.S. Air Force Chief Scientist.In less than a year he rose to the position of Assis-tant Secretary of the Air Force for R & D, and thenultimately Under Secretary. While in this last job hehelped define a new private/public organization forhandling space communications, called COMSAT.Charyk became its first President and eventually itsChairman.

The arrival of Lees and Charyk had brought thefaculty to five by the end of 1946. Interestinglyenough, of the five only one, Charyk, had a Ph.D.The rest had attended MIT and had M.S. degrees.Only a short time later appointment to the Prince-ton faculty without a Ph.D. became almost impos-sible.

With the appointment of Lees and Charyk the de-partment had the major elements for growth. Thefaculty was spread widely, if thinly, across the var-ious modern technologies of aeronautics. All fivefaculty members were eager to build the new De-partment into an aeronautical engineering programthat would attract national attention. All agreedthat Princeton University was a fertile environmentto achieve this objective. The department was build-ing up undergraduate demand, attracting graduatestudents to M.S. and Ph.D. programs, and conduct-ing sponsored research, even if in rather make-shiftfacilities. All of this became possible through theslow development of a sponsored research programwhich provided the resources for current activitiesand future growth, which came faster than antici-pated.

In the four years from 1947 to 1950, four windfallsaccelerated the Department’s growth:

1. The award by the Air Force, Navy, and Armyof a graduate program in Applied Aeronauti-cal Engineering with a principal focus on flightresearch.

2. The development of the Navy’s Project Squidwith Princeton named prime contractor.

3. An award to Princeton of a program for editing

the twelve volume series on high-speed aerody-namics and jet propulsion.

4. A joint award to Princeton and CalTech to bethe Guggenheim Jet Propulsion Centers.

The first, the decision of the Armed services tosend their top young officers to Princeton for a spe-cial M.S. program in Applied Aeronautical Engi-neering with a principal focus on flight research, wasinstigated by the Air Force. This service wanted tobuild up a graduate program in Applied Aeronauti-cal Engineering to balance those that it already hadin Theoretical Aerodynamics and Rocket Propulsionat CalTech, and in Instrumentation, Guidance, andControl at MIT. While at Wright Field during thewar, Perkins had recommended such a graduate pro-gram to the Air Force, and now he had the chanceto set it up at Princeton. First the Navy asked to beincluded, and then the Army joined in, and it devel-oped into one of the department’s most importantgraduate activities.

The impact of this large group of excellent stu-dents, many of whom later became illustrious grad-uates, was very great. A number of civilian studentsin a similar program contributed to the significanceof the group.1 Their substantial thesis undertakingsled to extensive sponsored research and ultimately tothe Princeton Flight Research Laboratory, a uniqueactivity that added to the Department’s reputation.

The second windfall, code named “Project Squid,”originated at the end of World War II when the Navybecame interested in the possibilities of pulse jetsand ram jets. Eager to influence education and re-search in these areas, the Navy under the guidance ofDr. Frank Parker, then a Department Head of TheBureau of Aeronautics, decided to set up a researchprogram under contract to one university cooperat-ing with four or five others. A committee made up ofthe partner universities would run the program withthe Navy playing an approval and support role.

The Navy decided in 1946 to award the programto Princeton, much to the surprise of many. JoeCharyk’s close connection with the CalTech groupwho were advising the Navy at the same time mayhave been part of the reason. Project Squid wasduly organized at Princeton and housed in the de-partment’s cinder block office. Frank Parker washired to come to Princeton as executive head of theprogram. At first the other Universities involvedwere Purdue, RPI, NYU and Cornell.

As Project Squid got under way, a large bud-get slowed approval and contracting of the pro-

1A brief list includes Glen Edwards∗47, Pete Conrad∗53,Norm Augustine’57, ∗59, and Phil Condit∗65. Edwards diedin 1948 evaluating the Northrop YB-49, the all-jet versionof the flying wing bomber, and gave his name to EdwardsAir Force Base. Pete Conrad was the third man to walk onthe Moon. Augustine became CEO of Lockheed-Martin, andCondit is currently CEO and Chairman of Boeing.

gram. Parker and the Navy were most anxious toget some money spent before the end of the firstfiscal year. They therefore expanded Project Squidwith a task order to include the ram rocket projectunder Charyk and the development of supersonicblowdown wind tunnels under Lees. It was diffi-cult to spread the umbrella of Project Squid overa study of shockwave boundary layer interaction,but the project allowed considerable flexibility todo many new things. It also gave the Departmentimportant visibility in the propulsion community,and built up the research facilities and the supportfor graduate students and research staff. Lees’ pro-gram developed ultimately into the Princeton GasDynamics Laboratory, and Charyk’s program, com-bined with others, later emerged under the banner ofthe Guggenheim Jet Propulsion Laboratory. ProjectSquid was a very useful program for Princeton in itsearly years.

One of the most noteworthy participants in thelater stages of Project Squid was John Fenn. Fennhad received a B.A. in chemistry from Berea Col-lege in 1937 and a Ph.D. from Yale in 1940. In1959, after a dozen years in industry he came toPrinceton as the Director of Project Squid, and asa Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Sciences.At Princeton, he studied mass spectroscopy usingsupersonic jets with skimmers. He returned to Yaleas Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistryin 1967, remaining there as a Research Scientist af-ter becoming Emeritus in 1987. In 1993 he movedto Virginia Commonwealth University as ResearchProfessor. In 2002, Fenn was honored with the No-bel Prize in Chemistry for his invention of a pio-neering technique that allows researchers to “weigh”large biological molecules such as proteins with un-precedented accuracy. The technique is a variationof his earlier spectroscopic work called ElectrosprayMass Spectrometry whereby species are ionized andthen accelerated by strong electric fields. The tech-nique is used in chemistry laboratories around theworld to rapidly and simply reveal what proteins asample contains, contributing to the development ofnew pharmaceuticals.

Another outgrowth of Project Squid was the slowdevelopment of the concept of publishing a series ofvolumes on modern development in high speed aero-dynamics and jet propulsion. The idea took shapethrough discussions between Lees and Charyk withvon Karman at CalTech, and Hugh Dryden, the Ad-ministrator of NACA. It finally came to a head in1948 when Princeton received a contract from theAir Force and the Navy to develop a twelve volumeseries on these topics. It was to be an attempt to up-date modern aeronautical technology along the linesof the Durand Series of prewar fame. The PrincetonUniversity Press assumed responsibility for the con-tract for publishing the series under the leadership

of Herbert Bailey’42, one of the Press’s most ableand vigorous administrators. Princeton organizedan editorial board composed of von Karman, HughDryden and H. S. Taylor, and hired Dr. MartinSummerfield from CalTech’s JPL to be the Editor.Joe Charyk became Associate Editor.

Development of the series turned out to be a longand agonizing effort, but the twelve volumes werefinally printed successfully. It took several changesin editors and contracting arrangements, and muchsweat and tears before it was finished. It did bringnotice to the Department during this early period,but, more important, Martin Summerfield’s broadinterest in propulsion and his own expertise in solidpropellant rockets led to his appointment as a FullProfessor in 1950. This dynamic and brilliant manplayed a large role in the development of the De-partment’s Propulsion Laboratories.

5 The Guggenheim Founda-tion

In 1948 the new Aeronautical Engineering Depart-ment at Princeton initiated discussions on the fu-ture of rocketry and jet propulsion with Harry F.Guggenheim, the head of the Daniel and FlorenceGuggenheim Foundation of New York. This Foun-dation had a history of interest in the various fieldsof aviation. It supported the development of aero-nautical engineering education and research facilitiesat several leading schools including MIT, CalTech,NYU and Georgia Tech. It also supported work inaviation safety, helped Charles Lindbergh in manyways, and became involved with the work of RobertH. Goddard, the famous rocket pioneer.

After World War II, Harry Guggenheim began astudy of how a relatively small institution like theDaniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation mightadvance the new fields of rocketry and jet propul-sion. He was helped by his friend and advisor onrocketry, G. Edward Pendray. At first they consid-ered commissioning studies at several universities todesign rocket ships for commercial missions like car-rying the mail from New York to London. It did nottake long to discover that the state of the art of rock-etry was still far too primitive for such schemes. Areturn to fundamentals was needed, including accel-eration of research in rocketry, but even more impor-tant, a major improvement in graduate educationprograms and motivation for bright young studentsto participate in the burgeoning new technology.

Guggenheim decided to create two centers for im-proving the technologies of rocketry and jet propul-sion: one at the California Institute of Technologyand the other at Princeton University. It surprisedno one that he picked CalTech as it was already in-volved with rocket experiments. Princeton’s Aero-

Figure 2: Rear two rows, from left to right: Arthur Kovitz, John Scott, Edward Kepler, George Sutherland,Richard John, Irvin Glasmman, Gary Mallard, Andrew Hammitt, Sydney Reiter, Daniel Bershader, DavidHarrje, Walter Warren, Bud Marshall. Second row from front, left to right: Unknown, Joseph Charyk, LesterLees, Ronald Probstein, Seymour Bogdonoff, Arnold Brooks, Edward Potlein. Front row, left to right: DanielSayre, Luigi Crocco, Theodore von Karman, Dean Kenneth Condit, Walter Davis, Martin Summerfield. Circa1950.

nautical Engineering Department also had a stronginterest in propulsion and it was a young and hun-gry Department, well oriented to working in newfields. Princeton advised the Guggenheim Founda-tion that their resources were needed for educationalpurposes, faculty and fellowships, and not for fund-ing actual research, which would be more appropri-ately conducted under contract with concerned gov-ernment agencies.

On December 14, 1948 the two grants were an-nounced, each for $240,000. The programs were ini-tially referred to as Daniel and Florence Guggen-heim Jet Propulsion Centers and included facultyand fellowship support for an original term of fiveyears. The major figures involved with this programare shown in figure 2.

The Guggenheim grant provided each school withresources to fund a Chair in jet propulsion. To honorthe great rocket pioneer that the Guggenheim Foun-

dation had supported so strongly, these were referredto as the Robert H. Goddard Chairs. At Prince-ton, a worldwide search was started for an eminentscholar for the position, culminating in the appoint-ment of Dr. Luigi Crocco of the University of Rome.Crocco was the son of a renowned aeronautical sci-entist, General Gaetano Arturo Crocco, who was in-ternationally known for his work in theoretical aero-dynamics. Crocco came to Princeton in 1948, be-coming the Departments sixth faculty member. Aformer student of Crocco, Thomas Brzustowski∗63,currently President of Canada’s National Scienceand Engineering Research Council, described himas “a patrician Italian, white-haired, distantly re-lated to Pope Pius XII, and with a fabulous accenthe cultivated.”

The Guggenheim Center not only provided theDepartment with a world class professor, but helpedfocus research programs in many aspects of the fields

Figure 3: Princeton Cessna 140, used as a flightlaboratory [9].

Figure 4: Modified North American Navion A, usedto study flight stability (Courtesy Rob Stengel).

of jet and rocket propulsion. It also led directly tothe establishment of our Guggenheim Jet PropulsionLaboratories some years later.

By 1950 the Department had grown rapidly, al-though it was still housed in the cinder blockbuildings that Dan Sayre had developed on thelower campus. Research facilities had been ex-panded into areas of the campus that permittedmakeshift construction, primarily temporary struc-tures just behind Palmer Stadium, neighbors toWalker Bleakney’s Shock Tube Laboratory and, alittle farther away, George Reynold’s Cosmic RayLaboratory, both part of the Physics Department.

During this period the department maintained asmall airplane, a Cessna 140, for undergraduate fly-ing laboratory experiments and also for flight re-search (figure 3). At first it was flown out of the Nas-sau Airpark, then on Route 1, but later it moved tothe Robbinsville Airport, and finally to the Prince-ton Airport on Route 206. The department eventu-ally acquired a Stinson L-5, and still later a Navion(figure 4). For a short time the Air Force lent a B-25which the department’s Air Force officers operatedfrom McGuire Air Force Base.

As the programs grew, it brought in many highlycompetent research staff, financed through the var-ious sponsored research programs. In the begin-ning many were part-time graduate students with arank of Research Assistant. As they completed theirgraduate program they would be shifted to full-timeResearch Associates. In some cases they were ap-

Figure 5: Chairman Daniel Sayre and Lester Leeslook on as Seymour Bogdonoff adjusts a supersonicwind tunnel [9].

pointed to the faculty as Assistant Professors. Oneof the first new research appointments was SeymourBogdonoff who had been a colleague of Lees at theNACA. He came to Princeton in 1946 with Leesto become his Assistant in Research and to workout a Master’s degree. Bogdonoff was soon heavilyengaged in setting up the blowdown tunnel facility(figure 5). Bogdonoff got his M.S. degree in 1949and was immediately appointed an Assistant Profes-sor. Another of the outstanding graduate studentsat that time was Edward Seckel. A former Prince-ton undergraduate, he had returned after the warto work on an M.S. degree, becoming an Assistantin Research to Nikolsky. After getting his degree hetook a position on the technical staff of the CornellAeronautical Laboratory. Perkins enticed him backto Princeton and made him an Assistant Professorin 1950.

By the end of this period the major foci of theDepartment’s activities emerged more clearly. Firstwere the flight activities run by Perkins, heavily sup-ported by our large military officer program.

The second emerging focus was a deep interest inhigh speed aerodynamics, led by Lester Lees andSeymour Bogdonoff. They taught both graduateand undergraduate courses in this area, but spent agreat deal of effort in developing one of the world’sfirst supersonic blowdown wind tunnels. They werestudying, both theoretically and experimentally, theproblems of boundary layers and their interactionwith shock waves. Many graduate students were in-terested in this area and one of them received one ofthe department’s first Ph.D.s in 1949.

The third area of concentration was in aspects ofpropulsion and combustion processes, strongly sup-ported by the Guggenheim Jet Propulsion Centeraward with its Goddard Professor, Luigi Crocco, andhis chief assistant David Harrje∗53. Joe Charyk was

Figure 6: Left to right: Graduate students Sin-I Cheng∗52, John Scott, Jr.∗54, ∗59, Clarence B. Cohen∗52,∗54, David Ross∗52, and Professor Joseph V. Charyk. Circa 1952.

doing research in ram jets, later assisted by Mar-tin Summerfield whose research interest was in solidpropellant rocket motors (see figure 6).

A fourth area of interest centered on Nikolsky andhis work on helicopters and the aerodynamics of ro-tors. Ed Seckel, and later another graduate assistantPat Curtiss, helped him in this work. This groupstarted to develop unique experimental facilities forinvestigating rotor problems of helicopters, VSTOLsand others.

A fifth area of faculty interest emerged at the endof this era, the aerodynamics of low speed flight. Itgrew from the development of undergraduate experi-mental facilities. It had originally been an interest ofDan Sayre’s, aided strongly by Dave Hazen. Theyperformed many experiments in flow visualization,including smoke tunnels and water tables. Most thiswork was sponsored by the Navy.

The faculty, then, in the fall of 1950 was as fol-lows: Dan Sayre (Chairman), Nikolsky, Perkins,Lees, Charyk, Crocco, Bogdonoff, Summerfield andSeckel. Some of these people are shown in figures 7–10. Six out of these nine were subsequently electedto The National Academy of Engineering after itwas formed in 1964. The Department was grow-ing its professional research staff including graduatestudents, Research Assistants and Research Asso-ciates. Some years later an even higher researchrank was established, that of Senior Research As-sociate. Many of the research appointments carriedthe additional statement “With rank of Associate

or Full Professor.” Besides a faculty of nine in 1950,there were 40 graduate students, twelve of them inthe Ph.D. program. Nineteen were civilians, 14 wereAir Force, 4 were Navy, and 3 were Army. Total staffof all ranks amounted to 70. The value of the spon-sored research program totalled about $550,000. Atthat time only the Physics Department had a largerprogram; the rest of the Engineering School was notbuilding up equivalent programs.

6 Establishment of ForrestalCampus

In 1949 and early 1950, Dan Sayre and CourtPerkins started to study seriously how they couldbetter house the sprawling Department. Every cu-bic foot in the original buildings was filled, and thedistance from the rest of the University was workablebut inconvenient. The cinder block or wooden con-struction hardly conformed to Princeton architec-ture and was barely adequate for the department’sneeds. “Charyk’s work was both noisy and noisome,producing malodorous fumes that did even less toendear the department to the astronomers in thenearby FitzRandolph Observatory. Adding to thecacophony of roaring test engines was the caterwaulof the so-called ‘blowdown’ wind tunnel used by Leesand Bogdonoff.” [4].2

2The tunnel was built out of war surplus material “to holddown the costs so that it could be used ... even if outside

Figure 7: Left to right: Professors Irvin Glassman, Martin Summerfield; Senior Research Associate J. PrestonLayton, Professor Luigi Crocco, and Jerry Grey. June 1962.

Figure 8: Left to right: Professors Jerry Grey, Luigi Crocco, Robert G. Jahn’51, ∗55 and Martin Summerfield;Senior Research Associate J. Preston Layton, Professor Irvin Glassman. June 1962.

Figure 9: Graduate student C. T. Bowman∗66 adjusting an optical system for measuring mean droplet sizesduring combustion in a flow reactor. June 1962.

Figure 10: Graduate student W. A. Sirignano∗64 prepares equipment to study rapid transients in liquid rocketinstability. June 1962.

Figure 11: Left to right: Lester Lees (project head),Chairman Daniel Sayre, Rear Admiral Thorvald A.Solberg (chief of the Office of Naval Research), Pres-ident Harold W. Dodds, and Seymour Bogdonoff(project engineer) [6].

Sayre and Perkins made a drawing of a possiblenew building, between the Stadium and ProspectStreet, where the University built its Computer Cen-ter some years later. Lawrence Rockefeller, at thattime a member of the Departmental Visiting Com-mittee, helped with the study and made suggestionsfor raising the million dollars it was estimated tocost. Within a few weeks a remarkable event forceda solution to these housing problems that dominatedthe life of the Department for many years to come.

In the words of Court Perkins [3]: “During thefall term of 1950, I was teaching an undergraduatecourse in the Engineering Building when the dooropened and Dan Sayre put his head in and told meto dismiss the class and follow him. We got in hiscar and drove out Route 1 to the grounds of a Di-vision of the New York based Rockefeller Institutefor Medical Research. The Princeton Division con-centrated on plant and animal pathology. This largeproperty extended from Carnegie Lake nearly to thePennsylvania Railroad, an area of 825 acres, withsome twenty buildings on it (figure 12. Dan toldme that The Rockefeller Institute was going to closedown this whole Division and return parts of it toNew York City. The land, buildings, and improve-ments were being put up for sale, and our alumni,

support ... should ever be withdrawn.” At the wind tunnel’sdedication (figure 11), President Dodds commended the ideaof recycling military supplies, saying, “a valuable researchweapon has been forged from an especially warlike set of ma-terials. The compressors and red flasks outside this room wereoriginally designed for ... naval torpedoes ... The sides of thetunnel were intended for armor plating on the USS Illinois.That material designed for wartime use can be converted tohigh scientific purpose should encourage us in our hope thatscientific purpose can also serve the cause of peace...” [6], asquoted by [5].

Figure 12: Aerial view of the Forrestal ResearchCenter (Princeton University Archives).

John D. III, and Lawrence Rockefeller were trying tointerest the University in buying it. We were beingasked whether or not the Aeronautical EngineeringDepartment would move into this area if the Univer-sity acquired it. If we did, it would solve our spaceproblems for all time, but we would be four milesfrom the main campus instead of one, and we hadfound one inconvenient. The advantage to the Uni-versity of acquiring the property, almost doublingthe University campus, was so obvious that we feltwe should agree to move in, if it was purchased, andtry to solve the distance problem.”

With considerable help from the Rockefellers, theUniversity purchased the property for $1,500,000, amagnificent price for this large new area. Another$500,000 would be needed for the renovation andconversion of facilities [4]. The whole AeronauticalDepartment was moved into this area and it wasalso used to house expanding research interests ofother departments. The deal was finally consum-mated and the complicated move to the new areabegan. Many Princeton alumni contributed to thisnew acquisition and the whole area was named TheJames Forrestal Research Center after the UnitedStates’ first Secretary of Defense, who served from1947 to 1949. Forrestal (figure 13) was a Prince-ton graduate, Class of 1915, and a former CharterTrustee. During his term as Secretary of Defense hewas responsible for founding the Office of Naval Re-search, he initiated work that led to the introductionof nuclear powered submarines, and he authorizedresearch on a satellite space platform [7].

According to Perkins [3]: ”The decision to moveended what I like to refer to as the ”cinder block”era of the Department. No longer were we almostsitting on top of each other in makeshift facilities.Nevertheless, we had all been having a grand time.We had built up a nationally ranked Department of

Figure 13: Portrait of James Forrestal by RaymondP. R. Neilson.

Aeronautical Engineering, and at little cost to theUniversity. We all felt euphoric about our situation.We had a very friendly group of about 75 in 1950,including faculty, research staff, technicians, gradu-ate students, mechanics, and secretaries. As a ma-jority were married, it was a large group of peoplewhen we all got together, which we did quite often.The Department became famous for its Christmasparties, and many of our friends outside the Depart-ment were delighted to be invited to these festiveoccasions. These activities were usually led by oursuper party man, Dan Sayre, but he was ably sup-ported by the rest of us, including Nikolsky, our vig-orous Russian, and our most enthusiastic graduatestudents.” “..... this was a highly motivated, friendlyand successful group. We were delighted with whatwe were accomplishing and enjoyed being together.”

There was considerable debate within the Univer-sity as to how to utilize this new facility that nearlydoubled the size of the campus. It was decided thenew Center should be used for expanding researchprograms of various university departments, that itshould house the Aeronautical Engineering Depart-ment and, very importantly, that it should be free ofnormal University rules on architecture. It was alsodecided to put the activities of the Center undera new administrative office which would supervisegrounds and buildings, planning for new occupants,financing and working with the University admin-istration. The Administrative Office of The JamesForrestal Research Center was established with DanSayre in charge. The responsibility was complicated,

and Sayre found that it took him full time. Presi-dent Dodds then asked Court Perkins to replace DanSayre as Chairman of the Department, and Perkinstook over this position on February 19, 1951.

After the move, the Aeronautical Engineering De-partment started a relatively rapid expansion oftheir facilities in this new area. Other programs inthe University also started to move in. One of thefirst was a new research program in fusion power un-der the leadership of Dr. Lyman Spitzer, then Chair-man of the Astronomy Department. A doughnut-shaped torus for magnetic containment of a plasmaof tritium and deuterium was conceived, and theAEC funded a program at Princeton with the firstexperiments carried out in several modified build-ings at Forrestal. Because of the secrecy involved,a whole new set of buildings was constructed. Atthe outset the program was called “Project Matter-horn,” and the main building became known as theMatterhorn Building. When it became evident veryrapidly that the problem was very complex and thatthe physics of high temperature plasmas was notunderstood, the classification of the program wasremoved and the program took on the more appro-priate title of Plasma Physics Laboratory.

Within a few years the development of a pro-ton synchrotron was undertaken — again under theaegis of the AEC. This project was led by Dr. MiltonWhite, an eminent experimental physicist who hadhelped design many high energy physics research fa-cilities. The AEC arranged to have the University ofPennsylvania associated with this project, and thenew accelerator became the Princeton-Penn ProtonSynchrotron. No sooner had it been completed andthe first experiments run, when it was closed bythe AEC. The machine was obsolete, and the wholeproject cancelled. This, of course, was an academictrauma for the Physics Department and a financialone for the University.

The two large physics experiments plus the mul-tiple small facilities of the Aeronautical Departmentwere the heart of The Forrestal Research Center.The Forrestal Administrative group occupied thefirst floor of the main office building (later namedSayre Hall) and the Aeronautical Engineering De-partmental headquarters was on the second alongwith several members of the faculty. A conferenceroom and later a fine library, were also establishedon the first floor.

After Perkins became Chairman a set of depart-mental offices were established on the second floor ofSayre Hall. Then, all of the department’s researchoperations were moved into this new area. This re-quired the modification of many buildings for hous-ing of these facilities and for the faculty, graduatestudents, research staff, mechanics and secretaries.

The undergraduate laboratory facilities with the3′ × 5′ wind tunnel were among the first to move in.

Behind Sayre Hall was an elaborate series of green-houses that had been used by the Rockefeller Groupfor plant disease studies. In the middle was a finesmall building that had been used as a potting shed.This was converted to house the wind tunnel. In agreenhouse next to the shed another wind tunnel fa-cility for instructional purposes was built. Designedby Dan Sayre, it had a central diffuser and powersection feeding two separate test arms. One circuithad a small 3′ × 1′ test section and the other hada 6′ × 3′ test section. An auditorium to house anaudience of about 150 was built, and soon becamean important part of the life of the Department inits new location. At the back of the greenhouse areaa utility building was converted to house Nikolsky’sresearch with an addition for his experiments on he-licopter rotor dynamics.

Moving the high speed aerodynamics work of Leesand Bogdonoff into one of the long shed-like animalresearch laboratories required a great deal of mod-ification to house not only the supersonic throats,but also the reciprocating compressors and the highpressure bottle farm. This was a most difficult tran-sition, particularly as the sponsors of this programwere nervous about continuing their support despitelong delays.

The work in propulsion and combustion underCharyk, Crocco and Summerfield was another dif-ficult transition. At the outset they set up shopin another of these animal research units, but theydidn’t fit in very well. Planning proper housing forthis expanding operation, which later became one ofour largest research activities, had to begin at once.

Flight research was improved immeasurably byacquisition of a very large field suitable for an air-port right in the middle of the Forrestal area. Thevery soft field gave trouble at first, but eventuallya macadam runway and proper hangars were built,and it became a very fine and unique operation.

The Department during 1951 to 1953 was heavilyinvolved with this move, but left it with almost un-limited room for expansion. The principal disadvan-tage was the distance from main campus. There waslittle inconvenience to the graduate students whohad cars, and could have offices in the new build-ings of the Forrestal Research Center (FRC). How-ever, although the faculty gave their undergraduatecourses in the Engineering Building on main cam-pus, they started giving some graduate courses inthe FRC. Undergraduate laboratories were also inthe new facilities, and the undergraduates had to betransported by bus. Nevertheless, most of the un-dergraduates enjoyed coming out to the FRC wherethey could see first line research in progress, and insome cases they were able to get involved in the vari-ous programs. They liked this new arrangement, butthey would have been happier with the Departmentoffices and the faculty at closer range. The distance

problem continued to nag the Department for manyyears, but Forrestal campus provided a remarkablearea for expanding departmental operations, thatnow included five Laboratories. These Laboratorieswere entitled: the Flight Research Laboratory; theGas Dynamics Laboratory; the Guggenheim Propul-sion Laboratory; the Low Speed Aerodynamics Lab-oratory; and the Rotor Dynamics Laboratory.

7 Aeronautical Engineering atForrestal

During the decade between 1953 and 1963, the De-partment had its greatest growth and reached con-siderable strength as an Aeronautical EngineeringDepartment. The launch of Sputnik in 1957, andthe failure of the Vanguard rocket in the same yeargave an enormous boost to all U. S. research effortsin aerospace, and the departments activities in pro-puslion research benefited greatly.

The first faculty appointment made after movinginto the FRC was that of David Hazen who was pro-moted from Research Staff to Assistant Professor in1953. He was engaged in setting up research pro-grams for the Navy in flow visualization, and is per-haps best known for his film on the subject as partof the NSF Films in Fluid Mechanics, distributed bythe Encyclopedia Britannica. However, the biggestchanges in the Department faculty were not addi-tions, but two serious resignations. In 1953 LesterLees left to accept a Full Professorship at CalTech.Soon thereafter Joe Charyk left to accept his re-search appointment with Lockheed.

When Lees left, he was the Head of the rapidly ex-panding program in high speed aerodynamics, buthe had a dynamic and able associate, Seymour Bog-donoff who took over running this program. SinceBogdonoff was basically an experimentalist, a searchwas started to find a theoretical person to fill theshoes of Lees. This brought Dr. Wallace Hayesto Princeton in 1954. Hayes had achieved consid-erable fame for his theoretical work in transonicflows, and laid down some of the theoretical ba-sis for the experimental work done by Whitcomb ofthe NACA, that brought the Area Rule into promi-nence. Hayes had received his Ph.D. from CalTechand then worked as a theorist, first for Lockheed,and later for the U.S. Navy. He was later to write amost influential book Hypersonic Flows Theory withRonald Probstein∗52, as well as another on Gasdy-namic Discontinuities.

Some excellent research talent was attracted tothe staff of this Laboratory, many of them ending upon the faculty. Among these were Sin I. Cheng, Har-vey S. H. Lam, George Bienkowski, Enoch Durbin,and Jerry Smith. Two very able Senior ResearchAssociates, Andrew Hammitt and Irvin Vas, also

Figure 14: Schlieren photograph of a blunted flatplate in helium at Mach 11.6. The boundary layeris visible over the top of the plate. The shock shapeis close to a power-law shape, with a measured ex-ponent of 0.66 ± 0.01. This may be compared tothe theoretical value by Hayes & Probstein of 0.667.Photo courtesy of the Gas Dynamics Laboratory,Princeton University.

played an important role in the development of thisLaboratory. Bogdonoff rapidly had this group work-ing smoothly with a very sophisticated program insuper and hypersonics, both theoretical and experi-mental, and the activity was called the “Gas Dynam-ics Laboratory.” The combination of experimentaland theoretical work proved a powerful combination(fiure 14. By the end of the decade this group wasfull of graduate students and running a renownedprogram in high speed theoretical and experimentalaerodynamics.

Charyk was a great loss, but Crocco and Sum-merfield remained, together with Dr. Irvin Glass-man, a Research Associate under Charyk. Glass-man was appointed to the staff in 1954 and wasmade an Assistant Professor in 1955. Drs. JerryGrey and Robert Jahn were added to the faculty andPreston Layton was appointed as a Research Asso-ciate to handle the complicated propulsion installa-tions. This group organized themselves around theGuggenheim grants, and they became the “Guggen-heim Laboratory for the Jet Propulsion Sciences.”Crocco and Cheng made major contributions to theunderstanding of rocket motor instabilities, and in1956 coauthored a highly influential monograph on“Theory of Combustion Instability in Liquid RocketMotors”. Another important contribution was Mar-tin Summerfield’s “Burning Rate Theory of SolidPropellant” in 1958. In 1962, Bob Jahn founded theElectric Propulsion and Plasma Dynamics Labora-tory, and in 1968 wrote the book “Physics of ElectricPropulsion”, which was instrumental in founding thefield of electric propulsion for space applications.

The Rotor Dynamics Laboratory, under Nikolsky,was strengthened by Pat Curtiss, first as a Ph.D.student, then as Research Staff, and then as an As-sistant Professor after he completed his Ph.D. in1965. Two very able research staffers who kept the

whole program afloat were Joe Traybar and WilliamPutnam.

In other areas, Dunstan Graham’43, was ap-pointed to the faculty in 1958. Tom Sweeney,became a Research Associate in 1958, and BarryNixon, a fine test pilot and engineer, joined the staffin 1959. Also, Woldemar von Jaskowsky joined BobJahn’s growing effort in electric propulsion in 1962.

During this decade the department suffered twofurther grievous losses. Dan Sayre died of cancer in1956, and Alexander Nikolsky died of a sudden heartattack in 1963. These were the department’s firsttwo faculty members and they had played a largerole in getting the Department started. Perkins wasnow the only member of the first five still present in1963.

At the end of 1963 the department had 70 gradu-ate students and an equivalent number of undergrad-uates. The sponsored research funds totalled justover $1,000,000, and the total staff came to 250. Atthis time a national survey of Departments of Aero-nautical Engineering rated Princeton the #2 schoolin the country.

A new office-type building was built to house theGas Dynamics Laboratory, as well as a few ancil-lary buildings for new blowdown wind tunnels andfacilities to recover the working fluid when it washelium. A grant from the NASA was used to buildthe Guggenheim Laboratories. Rocket pits, instru-mentation rooms, molecular beam rooms and otherswere added to this fine building (figures 15 and 16).The flying field was improved by building a 3,200 ft.runway, including taxiways and ramps. A hangarwas added with rudimentary rooms for some staffand graduate students. Some of the greenhouseswere replaced with a new building to house the LowSpeed Aerodynamics Laboratory and finally the re-search facilities for the Rotor Dynamics Laboratorywere expanded. This expansion was completed withthe building of a unique facility called “The LongTrack” designed to test helicopters, VSTOL designsand ground effect machines. This facility was basi-cally a long shed that housed a 450 ft track (laterlengthened to 750 ft) for flying aircraft in still airat low speeds, especially useful for studying prob-lems encountered in hover (figures 17 and 18). ThePrinceton group, led by Curtiss, became a centerfor helicopter studies, especially for understandingproblems in stability and control.

All of these expansion efforts cost some three tofour million dollars, so fund-raising programs wereessential. A major resource for these purposes wasthe “Corporate Associate Program” where industrywas asked to support the Department by makingannual contributions to this special fund. In return,they received all of the research reports, invitationsto the Department for special programs, better ac-cess to the graduate students for recruiting, and ac-

Figure 15: View of Forrestal Campus facilities. The office building is in the center of the photograph withexperimental areas behind it. To its rear are the atmospheric test facilities and to its left, partially obscured,are the liquid propellant rocket test cells. The bottle farm and ejector tower servicing the supersonic andhypersonic facilities may be seen in the lower left. The solid propellant processing laboratory is in the upperleft hand corner. June 1962.

Figure 16: Test cells at Forrestal Campus used for studying liquid propellant rocket combustion dynamics.June 1962.

cess to the faculty for special discussions. For thisservice they would make an annual payment rang-ing from five to twenty thousand dollars. This pro-gram grew to about $200,000 per year and it wasreferred to as ”White Money” because it was fullycredited to the Department. The University chargedno overhead against the expenditures from this fundand the Departmental Chairman could approve alloutlays. This resource was used to build facilities,and occasionally for other Departmental purposessuch as add-ons to fellowship awards, special re-search projects, and so on. This money gave thedepartment great freedom of decision and some free-dom from normal University constraints. When therapid Departmental growth was questioned, Presi-dent Dodds would turn to critics and say, “But theycut their own feed” [3].

During this decade, Perkins was on leave withoutpay from Princeton on two occasions to take assign-ments from the government. The first was an ap-pointment as U.S. Air Force Chief Scientist, a rotat-ing position advisory to the Chief of Staff of the AirForce, at that time General Nate Twining, servingin the Pentagon from June 1956 through September1957. The second leave, from February 1960 throughJanuary 1961, was a Presidential appointment as As-sistant Secretary of the Air Force for R & D. In eachcase, Nikolsky was made Acting Chairman.

8 Aerospace and MechanicalSciences

This was the state of affairs at the start of the 1963-64 academic year. At this time the Mechanical En-gineering Department was falling on difficult times.Most of the new high technology fields that mighthave been taken over by the ME Department wereswallowed rapidly by the AE Department, leavingME few new objectives to grow on. They were moreaccustomed to the normal Princeton Engineeringscene and viewed the startling growth of AE withsome concern. ME had taken on a program in SolidState Physics that had largely been abandoned bythe Physics Department, but besides that there waslittle excitement in this Department, and there hadbeen a drop in student demand for ME. The Depart-ment was becoming largely moribund [3].

The Engineering School made a study of ME andwhat might be done. They seemed to have threechoices. They could try to revitalize the Departmentat the risk of running head on into the programs ofthe AE Department. They could abolish the De-partment altogether, but this would be anathema tomany of the powerful Princeton alumni and to thestrong professional society, the ASME, a politicallydifficult choice that was soon abandoned. The thirdpossibility was to merge ME with AE, in the hope

Figure 17: Aerial view of the Long Track Labora-tory used in studying helicopter and VSTOL aircraftaerodynamics, stability and control.

that the sum of the parts would be greater than thesum of each. The steady development of and growthof the engineering science approach had brought thecurricula, course offerings, and research interests ofthe two departments closer and closer together. Onthe decision of Professor Drake, Chairman of the MEDepartment, to resign from the University in June1963, it therefore seemed reasonable to consider themerger of the two departments [8]. This made goodsense, and the merger was approved by the Univer-sity and the Engineering School and announced onMay 31, 1964. Perkins was asked by President Go-heen to Chair this new Department, and after muchstudy and argument the newly merged Departmentwas named the Department of Aerospace and Me-chanical Sciences (AMS). This new department com-bined the full activity of the old AE Departmentbased at Forrestal with the activities of the old MEbased in the Engineering Quadrangle, a new build-ing completed in 1962 to house the entire School ofEngineering and Applied Science (figure 19).

At first Perkins maintained the Departmental of-fices in Sayre Hall in the FRC, and set up anotheroffice in the old ME Chairman’s office in the Quad-rangle. Slowly but surely, however, the Departmen-tal office in the Engineering Building became head-quarters and office space was provided for AE fac-ulty members in the Engineering Quadrangle. Thisarrangement went a long way to alleviate the prob-lem of distance from the department’s students andthe rest of the University faculty. At the same timeit started moving attention from the FRC and back

Figure 18: Interior view of the Long Track Labora-tory (courtesy Rob Stengel).

to the main campus. This was destined to have adamping effect on the growth of the Department.Inevitably the tightly knit group that had formed inthe old AE Department was starting to break up,and the department was never were quite the sameagain.

A study was carried out how to operate this newlymerged Department and its much larger faculty andstudent body during the academic year 1963–64.The faculty of the AMS Department was now oneof the largest in the University with a record num-ber of graduate students, and had one of the largestsponsored research programs in the University anda very complex group of research facilities. It was acomplicated organization.

From 1963 to 1966 the AMS Department grew tobe one of the largest in the University, with 29 reg-ular faculty members and a large research staff, 130graduate students and a sponsored research programof over $3,000,000, most of which was based on theactivities at Forrestal.

During the next few years the department lostquite a few of the original ME faculty. Robert Drake,who was Chairman of the ME Department at thetime the merger was being discussed, had left tojoin the Engineering Department at the Universityof Kentucky. A year later he took Roger Eichhornwith him. John Fenn left to go to Yale. Jerry Grey

Figure 19: Aerial view of the Engineering Quadran-gle, circa 1971 [8].

of the old AE Department left to form his own com-pany, Greyrad. One of the ME faculty that stayedon, Barrie Royce, continued to pursue his interestsin spectroscopy and solid state physics. A student ofhis, Eli Harari∗73, went on to found SanDisk Corpo-ration, and currently serves as President and CEO.George Mellor’s contributions evolved from his orig-inal interests in turbomachinery, to modelling tur-bulence, to modeling geophysical flows. He was in-strumental in bringing the Bureau of Commerce’sGeophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory to Forre-stal Campus in 1968 from its original home in Wash-ington, D.C.

There were some additions also. Cemal Eringencame from Purdue to help develop a Solid Mechan-ics Laboratory to parallel the fluid mechanics ac-tivities. Jerry Smith and Arnold Kelly came fromCalTech, Bill Sirignano∗64 from Carnegie Mellon,Richard Grot from Purdue, and Francis Moon fromCornell. Mark Knowlton’51 was appointed a Lec-turer in 1962, serving for some 30 years in thatcapacity. Francis Hama joined the department asSenior Research Scientist in 1969, and remained atPrinceton for about 20 years.

This period saw the development of Pinceton asa center for fundamental studies in engineering andapplied science. It became particularly noted for itsefforts in developing the fundamental understand-ing of fluid mechanics and combustion processes.In fluid mechanics, Hama’s contributions to the un-

derstanding of laminar-to-turbulent transition overthe entire speed range from hypersonic to incom-pressible flows are still widely recognized for theirimportance. The work in hypersonic and super-sonic flows contiuned unabated under the direc-tion of Bogdonoff, Cheng, Hayes, and Bienkowski.The combustion group, led by Martin Summerfield,Irv Glassman and Bill Sirignano, included FredianoBracco∗70 and Fred Dryer∗72 who were later to jointhe faculty. Glassman’s book Combustion appearedin 1977 (currently in its third edition), and foundedthe Combustion Science and Technology Journal.In dynamics and control, Rob Stengel∗68 designedthe Lunar Module manual control system, and EarlDowell and Pat Curtiss authored the book ModernCourse in Aeroelasticity in 1978.

In 1974, after a record 23 years, Court Perkinsstepped down as Chairman, and was succeeded bySeymour Bogdonoff. Perkins stayed on as AssociateDean for one year under the new Dean of the Engi-neering School, Bob Jahn, another AE faculty mem-ber, and on July 1, 1975 Perkins went on a three-year leave without pay to become President of theNational Academy of Engineering in Washington,D.C. In 1978 he was given a four-year extensionof his term at the Academy, and became ProfessorEmeritus. Apart from many other honors he hasreceived through the years, he was awarded an Hon-orary Doctorate from Princeton University in 2001.

9 Accreditation

Accreditation was important to the department, butnot all accreditation visits went smoothly. Accoringto Perkins [3]: “In the early 1960s we had a visitfrom the ECPD (Engineering Council for Profes-sional Development) Accreditation Committee thatoperated in conjunction with the Engineering Pro-fessional Societies. We had to undergo these visitsevery sixth year. The Accreditation Committee thisyear was led by my old friend Dr. Raymond Bis-plinghoff, then on the MIT faculty in AeronauticalEngineering. I had first met Ray at Wright Fieldduring World War II, when he was serving in theDynamics Branch of the Aircraft Laboratory. Hismajor interest at that time was wing flutter, andhe eventually wrote a book on Aeroelasticity withhis colleague Holt Ashley. Now, at that time, wewere not very strong in those areas of aeronauti-cal technology that dealt with structures. Our onlyfaculty member who was competent in these areaswas Nikolsky, and his interests had shifted to otherfields. We had to shotgun some of our younger fac-ulty into teaching undergraduate courses in this fieldand there was essentially no graduate program at all.

As was inevitable, Ray Bisplinghoff complained ofthis situation and asked us how we expected to be

a first class Department of Aeronautical Engineer-ing without a strong program in the structural fieldsthat would match our powerful programs in Flight,Fluid Dynamics, Propulsion and Combustion, RotorDynamics and Low Speed Aerodynamics. We cer-tainly recognized this problem, so asked Ray to rec-ommend someone to us from his Sc.D. candidates atMIT. He recommended to us Eugene Brunelle, andafter a visit to us Brunelle was appointed to the fac-ulty as an Assistant Professor in 1962, but shortlyleft to accept a higher ranked position at RPI.

We then went back to Ray Bisplinghoff for a sug-gestion of a more acceptable candidate for us. Thistime he recommended one of his top Sc.D. students,Earl Dowell, for this position. We found Earl ex-cellent and appointed him as an Assistant Professorin 1963. Earl satisfied our needs for a faculty mem-ber in structures and structural dynamics, and inshort order proved himself to be a top flight teacher-scholar with a growing sponsored research programand many graduate students. Perhaps he was toogood, for some twenty years in 1982 Earl was madeDean of Engineering at Duke University, and the De-partment was back where we started. In 1983, Dr.Jim Marr, now MIT’s expert in structural dynamicsvisited the Department as a member of its Visit-ing Committee. He remarked, ‘How can Princetonhave a first class program in Aeronautical Engineer-ing without a faculty competence in structures andstructural dynamics?’ ”

10 More Recent Times

The department continued to prosper under Bog-donoff, who served as Chairman from 1975 to 1983.He was followed in that position by Harvey Sau-HaiLam (1983–1989), Irvin Glassman (1989–1990), andGarry L. Brown (1990–1998). The present Chair-man is Alexander J. Smits.

The period from 1975 to the present day de-serves a separate treatment, as the department sawthrough some momentous changes, not the least ofwhich were the impact of co-education that began in1969, the end of the space race following the success-ful landings on the Moon, the Arab oil embargo of1973 and the ensuing energy crisis, the aftermath ofthe Vietnam War that ended in 1975, and the stronganti-war sentiment that grew during the protest era.

One particularly noteworthy development was theestablishment in 1970 of the Center for Energy andEnvironmental Studies (CEES). Irvin Glassman be-came its director in 1972, and “He, Enoch Durbin,and other combustion scientists turned their atten-tion from rocket and jet engines to improving fuelefficiency in automobile engines. David Harrje, whohad worked with Luigi Crocco on liquid-fuel rock-ets, applied his technical expertise to problems of

home-energy consevation, using the nearby housingdevelopment of Twin Rivers, New Jersey, as his lab-oratory” [4]. Robert Socolow joined the departmentin 1974, and on his arrival took over the leadershipof CEES. In 2000, the Center was subsumed in thePrinceton Environmental Institute (PEI).

In another development, the AMS Departmentchanged its name in 1978 to the Mechanical andAerospace Engineering Department, in alignmentwith national trends to gain better name recogni-tion from prospective students.

Four of the department’s students became as-tronauts: Pete Conrad’53, Gerry Carr∗62, JimAdamson∗77, and Greg Linteris∗90.

The department currently has 24 Faculty (16Full, 4 Associate, and 4 Assistant Professors), 4 Se-nior Research Scientists, 22 Research Staff, 16 Re-search Associates and Assistants, 11 ProfessionalTechnical Staff, 4 Senior Technical Support Staff,and 13 Administrative Support Staff. It is looselyorganized into five groups, based on the facultyresearch interests: Materials (Professors Royce,Soboyejo, Srolovitz, Suo); Applied Physics (Profes-sors Choueiri, Jahn, Miles, Suckewer); Fluid Me-chanics (Professors Brown, Martinelli, Smits, Mar-tin) Dynamics and Controls (Professors Holmes,Kasdin, Leonard, Littman, Rowley, Stengel) Com-bustion (Professors Bracco, Dryer, Law, Ju). In ad-dition, Professor Nosenchuck is in Design and Manu-facturing, and Professor Socolow continues his workon energy assessment through PEI.

The enrollment statistics for 2002–2003 show astudent body of 34 sophomores, 39 juniors, and 32seniors (105 total). Of the 32 seniors, 10 intendto graduate as mechanical engineers, 19 as com-bined aerospace and mechanical engineers, and 3 asaerospace engineers). The graduate student bodyfor 2002–2003 totals 89, with 79 Ph.D., 4 MSE, and 6ME candidates. The research income for 2001-2002is reported at $11,600,000. In the most recent NRCReport by Goldberg & Meher (1995), the AerospaceProgram was ranked #4 in the country, and the Me-chanical Engineering Program was ranked #6.

Acknowledgments

Ms. Maureen Hickey, for rescuing and archivingmany of the documents relating to the history ofthe department. Barrie Royce, for his comments onan earlier draft.

References

[1] Condit, K. H. (1949) Engineering at PrincetonUniversity. Princeton Alumni Weekly , Febru-ary 18, 1949.

[2] Hazen, D. C., In Alexander Leitch, A PrincetonCompanion. Princeton University Press (1978).

[3] Perkins, C. D. (1985) Recollections, 2, Chapter6: Princeton University. Privately published.

[4] Merritt, J. I. (2002) Princeton’s James For-restal Campus: Fifty Years of Sponsored Re-search. Princeton University.

[5] Bix, A. S. (1993) “Backing into Sponsored Re-search:” Physics and Engineering at PrincetonUniversity. (unpublished paper).

[6] Supersonic Wind Tunnel Dedicated. PrincetonAlumni Weekly , February 10, 1950.

[7] Press Release, Department of Public Informa-tion, Princeton University, October 12, 1958.

[8] Elgin, J. C. (1974) An Account of The School ofEngineering and Applied Science of PrincetonUniversity. Princeton University.

[9] Engineering at Princeton University. PrincetonAlumni Weekly , February 18, 1949.

1942 1950 1963 1963-64 1975 2002Sayre (chair) Sayre (chair) Perkins (chair) Perkins (chair) Bogdonoff (chair) Smits (chair)

Nikolsky Nikolsky Bogdonoff Suppiger Cheng BraccoPerkins Cheng Bogdonoff Curtiss Brown

Lees Crocco Cheng Durbin DryerCharyk Hayes Crocco Glassman HolmesCrocco Nikolsky Durbin Graham Jahn

Bogdonoff Seckel Fenn* Hayes LawSummerfield Summerfield Glassman Hazen Littman

Seckel Glassman Hazen Jahn MilesGraham Hayes Lam Royce

Grey Seckel Mellor SoboyejoHazen Smoluchowski* Seckel SocolowDowell Summerfield Sirignano SrolovitzJahn Daniels* Smoluchowski StengelLam Eichorn* Summerfield Suckewer

Graham Bienkowski SuoGrey Royce ChoueiriJahn Smith Leonard

Kittridge* Socolow MartinelliLam Bracco Nosenchuck

Mellor* Miles JuSorenson* Sweet KasdinBienkowski MartinCriminale* Rowley

DillonDowellLeigh*Royce*Welch*

Table 1: Members of the faculty of the AE, AMS and MAE Departments. Asterisks indicate members originally fromthe ME Department.