Jakob Ackeret
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Jakob Ackeret (1898-1981) was a Swiss aeronautical engineer. He is widely viewed as one of the foremost aeronautics experts of 20th century.
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[edit] Birth and education
Jakob Ackeret was born in 1898 in Switzerland. He received his Diploma degree in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zurich in 1920 under the supervision of A. Stodola. From 1921 to 1927 he worked with Ludwig Prandtl at the "Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt" in Göttingen, witnessing a legendary period in the development of modern fluid dynamics. He received his Ph.D from ETH Zurich in 1927.
[edit] Academic career
After completing his Ph.D, Ackeret worked at Escher Wyss AG in Zurich as Chief Engineer of Hydraulics, where he applied, with great success, modern aerodynamics to the design of turbines.
He became a professor of Aerodynamics at ETH Zurich in 1931.
[edit] Research
Ackeret was an expert on gas turbines and was known for his research on propellors and on high-speed propulsion problems.
When he was at ETH Zurich, he actively participated in the solution of practical engineering problems, such as the design of variable pitch propellers for ships and airplanes. His most important invention was the gas turbine with a closed circuit. He made the invention together with C. Keller. Furthermore, he introduced the mach number to describe multiples of the speed of sound.
In 1976, he was elected foreign associate member of the American National Academy of Engineering for his "contributions to the understanding of high-speed and supersonic fluid mechanics, leading to significant improvements to the science of flight".
