Theodore von Kármán was born into aJewish family inBudapest, then part ofAustria-Hungary, as Kármán Tódor, the son of Helene (Konn or Kohn,Hungarian:Kohn Ilka) andMór Kármán [eo].[1] Among his ancestors wereRabbiJudah Loew ben Bezalel, who was said to be the creator of theGolem of Prague, and RabbiMoses Kunitz, who wrote aboutZohar.[1] His father, Mór, was a well-known educator, who reformed the Hungarian school system and foundedMinta Gymnasium in Budapest. He became an influential figure and became a commissioner of the Ministry of Education,[7] and was responsible for "planning an education of a young archduke, the Emperor's cousin". In 1907 Mór Karman was ennobled, Theodore later described it:[8]
To receive a predicate of nobility, my father had to be landed. Fortunately he owned a small vineyard near Budapest, so the Emperor bestowed upon him the predicate "von Szőllőskislaki" (small grape). I have shortened it to von, for even to me, a Hungarian, the full title is almost unpronounceable.[8]
Theodore had three brothers (among themElemér Kármán [eo]) and one sister,Josephine. At age six, he could "perform large mental calculations",[9] for example multiplication of six-digit numbers.[8] Father discouraged Theodore's mathematical education, he was afraid that his son would be achild prodigy and a freak.[9] He was tutored by his father and his father's former student; later he entered the Minta Gymnasium in Budapest. He wonEötvös Prize "for the best student in mathematics and science in the whole of Hungary" in his last year at Minta.[9][a]
He studied engineering at the city's Royal Joseph Technical University (Budapest University of Technology and Economics). He graduated in 1902 with a degree in mechanical engineering, his thesis was "The motion of a heavy rod supported on its rounded end by a horizontal plane". He then served a year as an artillery cadet in the Austro-Hungarian army.[9] In 1903-1906 he worked as an assistant at the Royal Joseph Technical University. In 1906 he moved to theGerman Empire and joinedLudwig Prandtl at theUniversity of Göttingen, where he received his doctorate in 1908, for his research on "mathematical models for the buckling of large structures".[9] He taught at Göttingen for four years. In 1913 he accepted a position as director of the Aeronautical Institute atRWTH Aachen University, a leading German university. His time at RWTH Aachen was interrupted by service in theAustro-Hungarian Army from 1915 to 1918, duringWorld War I, when he designed thePetróczy-Kármán-Žurovec, an earlyhelicopter.[9]
After the war, in 1919, he returned to Aachen with his mother and sister Josephine. Some of his students took an interest ingliding and saw the competitions of theRhön-Rossitten Gesellschaft as an opportunity to advance in aeronautics. Kármán engagedWolfgang Klemperer to design a competitive glider.[11]
In 1926, Karman was first invited to the USA by theCalifornia Institute of Technology to build awind tunnel.[13][9] In 1930 he was invited for a position of a full-time director of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at California Institute of Technology (GALCIT); his mother and sister, Josephine, also moved to California.[9]
The US Army Air Force wanted Caltech to manufacture JATO rockets, but Caltech was not interested in operating an industry. In 1936, Kármán engaged the legal services ofAndrew G. Haley to form theAerojet Corporation, with his graduate studentFrank Malina and their experimental rocketry collaboratorsJack Parsons andEdward Forman to manufactureJATO rocket motors. Kármán later became anaturalized citizen of the United States.
In 1940, Kármán was selected byJohn M. Carmody, Administrator of the Federal Works Agency to be on the Board of Engineers tasked with investigating the November 7, 1940, collapse of theTacoma Narrows Bridge outsideTacoma, Washington. His expertise was instrumental in discovering the effect of aerodynamic forces on the bridge, causing its unusual "galloping" behavior and eventual collapse. Along with Civil EngineersOthmar Amman andGlenn B. Woodruff, he published the report "The Failure of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge"[15] on March 28, 1941.
German activity duringWorld War II increased US military interest in rocket research. In early 1943, the Experimental Engineering Division of theUnited States Army Air Forces Material Command forwarded to Kármán reports from British intelligence sources describing German rockets capable of travelling more than 100 miles (160 km). In a letter dated August 2, 1943, Kármán provided the Army with his analysis of and comments on the German program.[16]
He eventually became an important figure in supersonic motion, noting in a seminal paper that aeronautical engineers were "pounding hard on the closed door leading into the field of supersonic motion."[17]
In June 1944, von Kármán underwent surgery forintestinal cancer in New York City. The surgery caused twohernias, and Kármán's recovery was slow. Early in September, while still in New York, he met US Army Air Forces Commanding GeneralHenry H. Arnold on a runway atLaGuardia Airport, and Arnold then proposed that Kármán should move to Washington, D.C., to lead the Scientific Advisory Group and become a long-range planning consultant to the military. Kármán returned toPasadena around mid-September, was appointed to the SAG position on October 23, 1944, and left Caltech in December 1944.[18]
At the age of 81 Kármán was the recipient of the firstNational Medal of Science, bestowed in aWhite House ceremony by PresidentJohn F. Kennedy. He was recognized, "For his leadership in the science and engineering basic to aeronautics; for his effective teaching and related contributions in many fields of mechanics, for his distinguished counsel to the Armed Services, and for his promoting international cooperation in science and engineering."[19]
Kármán never married. He died on a trip to Aachen,West Germany, in 1963, five days short of his 82nd birthday,[20] and his body was returned to the United States to be entombed in the Beth Olam Mausoleum at what is now theHollywood Forever Cemetery.[21] He has sometimes been described as one ofThe Martians.[22]
Kármán's fame was in the use of mathematical tools to studyfluid flow,[23] and the interpretation of those results to guide practical designs. He was instrumental in recognizing the importance ofswept-back wings ubiquitous in modernjet aircraft.
Theodore von Kármán, left, is joined by Air Force and NASA officials while inspecting two of the models used in the high velocity, high altitudewind tunnels atArnold Air Force Base, 1959. The missiles areAgard-B andAtlas Series B.
Specific contributions include theories of non-elastic buckling,unsteady wakes in circum-cylinder flow, stability oflaminar flow,turbulence,airfoils in steady and unsteady flow,boundary layers, and supersonic aerodynamics. He made additional contributions in other fields, including elasticity, vibration, heat transfer, andcrystallography. His name also appears in a number of concepts, for example:
von Kármán, Theodore;Biot, M. A. (2004).Aerodynamics: Selected Topics in the Light of Their Historical Development. Dover Books on Aeronautical Engineering. Dover Publications. p. 224.ISBN978-0-486-43485-8.
von Kármán, Theodore (1956).Collected Works of Dr. T. von Kármán (1902–1951). 4 vols., Butterworth Scientific Publications.
von Kármán, Theodore (1961).From Low-Speed Aerodynamics to Astronautics. Pergamon Press.ASINB000H4OVPO.
von Kármán, Theodore; Edson, L. (1967).The Wind and Beyond—T. von Kármán Pioneer in Aviation and Pathfinder in Space. Little Brown. p. 376.ISBN978-0-316-90753-8.
Four years after Kármán died hisautobiographyThe Wind and Beyond was published by Lee Edson withLittle, Brown and Company. Seven majoracademic journals then followed withbook reviews by noted authors: As the book was non-technical, written for the general reader,Thomas P. Hughes[24] cited that as problematic given the technical context of Kármán's work. Hughes conceded that Kármán "exhibited a genius for finding the simplifying assumptions that made possible the mathematical analysis." While acknowledging Kármán's gifts as an applied mathematician and teacher,Stanley Corrsin points out that the autobiography is "marriage between a man and his ego." In the later part of his life, Kármán was a "planner of global symposia and societies" and a "consultant to the upper echelons of the Pentagon corps."[25]
Oncreativity, Kármán wrote "the finest creative thought comes not out of organized teams but out of the quiet of one's own world."[11]: 307 In his review[26] I. B. Holley noted "penetrating insights into the creative process, its ingredients, nurture and exploitation." According to Holley, Kármán was given to "convivial drinking and the company of beautiful women."
An enthusiastic review by J. Kestin[27] advised readers to buy and study the book, and prize it as a reference. On the other hand, Charles Süsskind[28] faults Kármán for his contempt for the conventional (gaminarie). Süsskind expected the book to show some reaction toWernher von Braun's coming to America, and some clarification of theHsue-shen Tsien affair, rather than "lapses into generalities". Süsskind also tags Kármán as amilitarist: a "forthright engineer who is quite unabashed about his lifelong association with military authorities in whatever country he happened to reside at the time."
Sydney Goldstein, who also wrote theRoyal Society memoir for Kármán, reviewed the autobiography[29] and remembered "an eminent engineer and scientist, warm-hearted and witty, much traveled, well-known by many, devoted to international collaboration, who, in his own words, as a scientist found the military 'the most comfortable group to deal with'".
In 2005 Kármán was named as an Honorary Fellow of theArnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC). Fellows of the AEDC are recognized as "People who have made exceptionally distinguished contributions to the center's flight testing mission."[36]
The boundary between the atmosphere and space is named theKármán line.
InIrvine, CA there is a five-mile street in the heart of Irvine's business center named after him.
In 1977,RWTH Aachen University named its newly constructed main lecture hall complex "Kármán-Auditorium" in memory of Kármán's outstanding research contributions at the university's Aeronautical Institute.
An auditorium at JPL is named after Kármán,[37] as is a series of monthly lectures held there since 2007.[38]
An auditorium atAFRL is named afterArnold and Kármán.
In 1963 President Kennedy awarded Kármán theNational Medal of Science: "Dr. von Karman, it is a great pleasure for me to select you as the first recipient of the National Medal of Science. I know of no one else who more completely represents all of the areas with which this award is appropriately concerned—science, engineering, and education."[40]
^von Karman's own recollections about the prize and competition: "Selected students were kept in a closed room and given difficult mathematics problems, which demanded creative and even daring thinking. The teacher of the pupil who won the prize would gain great distinction, so the competition was keen and teachers worked hard to prepare their best students. I tried out for this prize against students of great attainments, and to my delight I managed to win. Now, I note that more than half of all the famous expatriate Hungarian scientists, and almost all the well-known ones in the United States, have won this prize."[10]
^Sears, W. R. (1965). "Some Recollections of Theodore von Kármán".Journal of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.13:175–183.doi:10.1137/0113011.
^abTheodore von Kármán with Lee Edson (1967)The Wind and Beyond, page 98
^Alkemade, Dr. Ir. Fons (2010)."IUTAM History". Amsterdam, the Netherlands: International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. Archived fromthe original on July 17, 2011. RetrievedDecember 29, 2010.
^Othmar H. Ammann, Theodore von Kármán and Glenn B. Woodruff. The Failure of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, a report to the administrator. Report to the Federal Works Agency, Washington, 1941
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