Adolf Busemann
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Adolph Busemann (* 20 April 1901 in Lübeck, † 3 November 1986 in Boulder, Colorado) was an influential early pioneer in aerodynamics, specialising in supersonic airflows.
Born in Luebeck, Germany he originated the concept of swept winged aircraft which he presented at the Volta Congress in Rome in 1935, which led to the F-86, Soviet MIG-15 and many other modern aircraft. At the time of his proposal flight much beyond 300 miles per hour had not been achieved, and it was considered an academic curiosity. However, Busemann's sweep was kept ahead of the Mach cone in the supersonic airflow[1], unlike the later concept of Robert T. Jones.
He also did early work on magneto-hydrodynamics in the 1920s, as well as his work on cylindrical focusing of shock waves and non-steady gas dynamics. He invented Busemann's Biplane a supersonic design that emits no sonic shock waves.
In 1951 he gave a talk NACA's Langley Research Center where he described the fact that air at near supersonic speeds no longer varied in diameter with speed according to Bernoulli's theorem but remained largely incompressible and acting as fixed diameter pipes, or as he put it, 'streampipes' of flow and jokingly referred to aerodynamicists as needing to become 'pipe fitters'. This talk lead to an attendee, Whitcomb, in trying to work out what these pipes were doing in a transonic test he was performing, inventing the Whitcomb area rule a few days later.[2]
He held a professorship at the University of Colorado from 1963 and suggested the use of ceramic tiles on the space shuttle which were used.[3]
