Torkel Weis-Fogh
Born	(1922 -03-25)25 March 1922 Aarhus, Denmark
Died	13 November 1975(1975-11-13) (aged 53)[1] Cambridge, England
Alma mater	University of Copenhagen
Known for	Research onInsect flight[2][3][4][5] Weis-Fogh principle[6]
Scientific career
Fields	Entomology Aerodynamics
Institutions	University of Cambridge University of Copenhagen
Doctoral advisor	August Krogh
Doctoral students	Charles Ellington Bertel Møhl Axel Michelsen

Torkel Weis-Fogh (25 March 1922 – 13 November 1975) was aDanishzoologist andProfessor at theUniversity of Cambridge and theUniversity of Copenhagen.^{[1][7][8][9][10][11]} He is best known for his contributions to the understanding ofinsect flight, especially theclap and fling mechanism used by very small insects.James Lighthill named this "the Weis-Fogh mechanism of lift generation".^[12][13]

Weis-Fogh was born inAarhus and educated atUniversity of Copenhagen.

Weis-Fogh was research assistant to the Danish Nobel Prize–winning physiologistAugust Krogh, where he studied the flight mechanism of thedesert locust.^[14][15][16]

He pioneered studies ofinsect flight with Krogh in a classic paper of 1951.^[17] He then spent a year at the Copenhagen Institute ofNeurophysiology.^[12]

Weis-Fogh then went to theUniversity of Cambridge in England for four years, where he discovered arubbery protein,resilin, ininsect cuticle.^[12][18] He continued working on insect flight.^{[19][20][21][22][23]}

He returned to Copenhagen as Professor ofZoophysiology, but went back to Cambridge in 1966 to becomeProfessor of Zoology there, continuing to investigate mechanisms of cellmotility and of flight.^{[12][24][25][26][27][28]}

In 1973 Weis-Fogh devised a mathematical model explaining how extremely small insects such asthrips andchalcid wasps such asEncarsia formosa could fly usingclap-and-fling,^[29][30] where conventionalsteady stateaerodynamics did not apply. These insects gain lift by creating vortices near their wings, at the price of the wear and tear from repeated clapping. The British mathematician SirJames Lighthill named this theWeis-Fogh mechanism of lift generation.^[12][13] Weis-Fogh's 1973 paperQuick Estimates of Flight Fitness in Hovering Animals, Including Novel Mechanisms for Lift Production^[29] has been cited over 1000 times.^[31]

The Hanne and Torkel Weis-Fogh fund is named in his honour.^[32]

• 1922 births
• 1975 deaths
• 20th-century Danish zoologists
• Danish entomologists
• Professors of Zoology (Cambridge, 1866)
• Danish physiologists
• Academic staff of the University of Copenhagen
• University of Copenhagen alumni
• Danish expatriate academics in the United Kingdom

• Pages containing links to subscription-only content
• CS1 errors: ISBN date
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from January 2024
• Articles with hCards
• Pages using infobox person with deprecated parameters