Paul A. Libby

Paul A Libby (born September 4, 1921) is an Emeritus Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, a specialist in the field of Combustion and Aerospace Engineering.

Biography

Paul Libby received his bachelor's degree in 1942 and obtained his PhD under the supervision of Sol Penner in 1948, both from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. He also served in the United States Navy in between his Bachelors and Doctorate degree; he was a Junior Grade Lieutenant when discharged.

He joined the faculty of Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn and advanced to the rank of Professor. At that time, the famous aerodynamist Antonio Ferri, a friend of Theodore von Kármán, joined the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. Libby worked with Ferri as an assistant for ten years. In 1962, when Sol Penner was looking for faculty for the newly-founded School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, Libby was recommended to Penner by von Kármán. He joined UCSD in 1964 as one of the 10 founding faculty members. He served as department chair from 1973 to 1976. He also served as Acting Dean and Associate Dean of Graduate affairs.

Research

Paul Libby's research focuses on a broad range of topics in fluid dynamics including boundary layers, turbulence, aerothermochemistry and combustion. He, along with Keith Stewartson, were the first to identify the eigensolutions of boundary layer equations and studied the uniqueness of the solution. Homann-Libby flow is named after Libby for his work on axisymmetric stagnation point flows. Paul Libby, along with Kenneth Bray, discovered important phenomena in counter-gradient transport in turbulent flames through series of papers in the 1980 which are considered important contributions to our understanding of turbulent combustion.^[1][2][3][4]

Publications

Libby has produced more than 200 journal publications throughout his career. He authored numerous books and monographs, which includes An Introduction to Turbulence,^[5] Turbulent Reacting Flows^[6] (co-authored with Forman A. Williams), Space Flight and Re-Entry Trajectories,^[7] A Theoretical Analysis of the Turbulent Mixing of Reactive Gases with Application to the Supersonic Combustion of Hydrogen,^[8] Some Perturbation Solutions in Laminar Boundary Layer Theory,^[9] and Theoretical and Experimental Investigation of Supersonic Combustion^[10]

Honors

He was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1999.^[11] He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a British Royal Society Guest Fellow.

See also

• Stanford S. Penner
• Forman A. Williams

References