Arthur Kantrowitz

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Arthur R. Kantrowitz (born 1913) is an American scientist, engineer and educator.

Kantrowitz earned his B.S., M.A. and, in 1947, his Ph.D. degrees in physics from Columbia University. During his studies at Columbia, Kantrowitz started working as a physicist, in 1936, for the NACA, work he would keep for ten years. He went on to teach at Cornell University for the next ten years, meanwhile he founded the Avco-Everett Research Lab (AERL) in Everett, Massachusetts, in 1955. As explained below, the shock tube, high temperature gases, nose cone, and heat transfer all became synonymous with his name. He was AERL's director, chief executive officer, and chairman until 1978 when he took on a professorship at Dartmouth College. From 1956 to 1978 he also served as a vice president and director of Avco Corporation.

In a nation that has looked to the skies and beyond for nearly a century, the work of Dr. Arthur Kantrowitz has placed him as a forerunner in the achievement of aviation and space goals. His interdisciplinary research in the area of fluid mechanics and gas dynamics has made him a pioneer in the field of magnetohydrodynamics and has been applied to fields as disparate as the reentry of space vehicles, the development of the high-energy laser and the development of the intra-aortic balloon pump, a cardiac assist device credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives. He first suggested using ground-based lasers for launching bulk payloads into orbit, referred to as laser propulsion.

His early research produced incredible ingenuity: his work on supersonic diffusers and supersonic compressors in the early 40's has since been applied to jet engines; he invented the total energy variometer in 1939 used in soaring planes; he is the co-inventor of magnetically contained nuclear fusion, patent application 1941; and he invented the supersonic source for molecular beams in 1950 of which two Nobel Prizes in Chemistry were based.

Dr. Kantrowitz, as an advocate of the separation of science and technology from political or ideological concerns, first proposed in 1967 the creation of an Institution for Scientific Judgment, commonly referred to as the Science Court, to settle scientific controversies as they relate to public policy. He further developed the Science Court as its Task Force Chairman in President Ford's Advisory Group on Anticipated Advances in Science and Technology, 1975-1976.

Kantrowitz is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Astronautical Society, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (an honorary fellow), American Physical Society, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and member of the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences and International Academy of Astronautics. In 1953-1954, he held both Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships at Cambridge and Manchester Universities.

Dr. Kantrowitz is an honorary trustee of the University of Rochester, an honorary life member of the Board of Governors of The Technion,and an honorary professor of the Huazhong Institute of Technology, Wuhan, China. Kantrowitz also serves on the Board of Advisors for the Foresight Institute, an organization devoted to preparing for nanotechnology.

Kantrowitz holds 21 patents and has authored or coauthored more than 200 scientific and professional papers and articles and co-authored Fundamentals of Gas Dynamics, 1958, Princeton Univ. Press.