Von Karmans Work - The Later Years

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Von Karman's Work: The Later Years (1952 to 1963) and Legacy
Article in Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics · January 2009

DOI: 10.1146/annurev.fluid.010908.165156
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Review in Advance first posted online
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I N
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D V A
Von Kármán’s Work: The Later

Years (1952 to 1963) and Legacy
S.S. Penner, F.A. Williams, P.A. Libby,
and S. Nemat-Nasser
Annu. Rev. Fluid Mech. 2009.41. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org
by University of California - San Diego on 07/29/08. For personal use only.
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego,

La Jolla, California 92093-0411; email: spenner@ucsd.edu, fwilliams@ucsd.edu,
plibby@ucsd.edu, sia@ucsd.edu
Annu. Rev. Fluid Mech. 2009. 41:1–15 Key Words

The Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics is online at aerothermochemistry, AGARD, IAA
fluid.annualreviews.org
This article’s doi: Abstract

10.1146/annurev.fluid.010908.165156
In view of the earlier publication in this journal of a biography of Theodore
Copyright c 2009 by Annual Reviews. von Kármán by Sears & Sears (1979), which referred to his years in Germany
All rights reserved
at Göttingen (1908 to 1912) and Aachen (1912 to 1930) and at the Guggen-
0066-4189/09/0115-0001$20.00 heim Aeronautical Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology
(GALCIT) from 1930 to 1952, we restrict our review here to his later
years (from 1952 until his death in 1963). We also comment on his scien-
tific legacy and identify representative institutions and outstanding workers
whose research continues the von Kármán style of work in the general areas
of aerothermochemistry and allied fields.
1
ANRV365-FL41-01 ARI 28 May 2008 5:14
1. PERSONAL HISTORY
Theodore von Kármán was one of the Hungarian superstars who came to the United States before
World War II and played key roles in the defense of our country. This group included, among
others, the great mathematician John von Neumann (whom von Kármán called Yonnie), Edward
Teller (who addressed von Kármán as Uncle Todor), Eugene Wigner (physics Nobel Laureate and
a proponent of civil defense for the survival of nuclear attacks), Hans Albert Bethe (Nobel Laureate
for his description of stellar energy release), and Leo Szillard (who, together with Albert Einstein,
persuaded President Roosevelt to institute the U.S. nuclear weapons program in response to a
similar program believed to be in progress in Nazi Germany). As early as 1930, Robert A. Millikan,
Caltech President and Nobel Laureate in Physics, recruited von Kármán from the Aeronautical
Engineering Institute at Aachen, where he was the director, to become the founder of what was
perhaps the first department of its kind in the United States, which became an academic breeding
ground for this field. We, the authors, were all too young to participate in this initial adventure,
and even the oldest among us (Penner and Libby) did not join what was known as the Kármán
school until approximately 1950. Figure 1 is a photograph of von Kármán in a pensive mood as
he contemplates the challenge of space-vehicle survival in the return to Earth’s atmosphere.
Penner was privileged to become von Kármán’s collaborator for approximately 15 years, up
until von Kármán’s death in 1963, and to be present at some of his proudest hours, along with
Antonio Ferri, who was Libby’s teacher. One especially notable event was the inaugural award
ceremony in 1963 for the U.S. Medal of Science, of which von Kármán was the sole recipient
(Figure 2). Von Kármán introduced Ferri to President John F. Kennedy (Figure 3) with the
Figure 1
Theodore von Kármán in 1957, pondering space-vehicle re-entry at hypersonic speeds and heat-shield
survival.
2 Penner et al.
ANRV365-FL41-01 ARI 28 May 2008 5:14
Figure 2
President John F. Kennedy, Theodore von Kármán, and Jerome Wiesner (Presidential Science Adviser) in
1963 at the inaugural award ceremony for the U.S. Medal of Science.
remark, “Mr. President, here is my friend Antonio Ferri whom everybody knows (as a former
Italian freedom fighter and a superb aeronautical engineer).” Figure 4 shows an example of the
invitation to the White House ceremony, along with the U.S. postage stamp issued in 1992 to
honor von Kármán.
When von Kármán was inducted into the Papal Academy of Science at the Vatican, in attendance
were such long-term friends as the Italian General Crocco (father of Luigi Crocco, a well-known
rocket expert at Princeton University with whom several of the authors had long-standing pro-
fessional interactions, especially concerning such critical issues as rocket-booster stability) and D.
Gabrielli, President of the Fiat Corporation.
Von Kármán’s sister Josefine de Kármán (referred to as Pippa), who reigned over his Pasadena
home during her life, was a religious Catholic and responsible for the friendship between von
Kármán and the Los Angeles prelate (who presided over von Kármán’s wake at the von Kármán
residence, which was attended by more than 300 of his collaborators and friends from all over the
world).
Von Kármán received numerous honorary doctorates and became a distinguished member of
engineering and scientific academies worldwide.
2. THE METHODOLOGY OF VON KÁRMÁN

Von Kármán was above all an ingenious applied mathematician with the uncanny ability to find sim-
ple and direct solutions to all types of elusive problems. He reached the height of his productivity
www.annualreviews.org • Von Kármán’s Work: The Later Years and Legacy 3

ANRV365-FL41-01 ARI 28 May 2008 5:14
Figure 3
Theodore von Kármán in 1963, pointing to Antonio Ferri as Ferri shakes President John F. Kennedy’s hand.
To the left of Ferri are (counterclockwise) H. Dryden (Director of NACA, which later became NASA); Lee
Arnold (New York University), who became briefly Science Adviser to President Ferdinand Marcos of the
Philippines; and S.S. Penner. Partially visible behind the President is General B. Schriever (U.S. Air Force
and Director of Strategic Defense for the United States).
typically after midnight and after a leisurely banquet that generally included Hungarian Tokay
wine, especially when accompanied by a young and enthusiastic researcher who often had to
struggle staying awake long enough to grasp the great discovery being made without much of his
help.
Von Kármán had an especially close and productive relationship with the U.S. Air Force, an
agency for which he was constantly on call and that he assisted in resolving scientific and technical
issues, as well as in important policy decisions. This relationship was crucial in the founding of
NATO’s Advisory Group for Aeronautical Research and Development (AGARD), which played
an important long-term role in the reconstruction of the European aerospace industry after its
destruction during World War II. Two of the authors served on AGARD committees: Libby was
a member of the Fluid Dynamics Panel for more than 10 years, and Penner served for 18 years
as a member, as the chair, and finally on the executive committee of what was originally named
the Combustion Panel in 1952, which became the Combustion and Propulsion Panel in 1956 and
was renamed the Propulsion and Energetics Panel in 1965.
We do not here elaborate on the earlier von Kármán years at GALCIT, Caltech, because Sears
& Sears (1979) cover this period in their review and identify many distinguished collaborators
and disciples at Caltech whose publications relate to many of von Kármán’s important original
research findings in fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, and allied research fields. Especially notable
among this group are such luminaries as H.W. Liepmann, C.C. Lin, L. Howarth, M. Biot, H.S.
Tsien (with whom Penner wrote a joint paper on radiative heat transfer during the early 1950s),
and other famous von Kármán students and associates.
4 Penner et al.
ANRV365-FL41-01 ARI 28 May 2008 5:14
a Figure 4
(a) A typical letter of
invitation to the U.S.
Medal of Science
award ceremony at the
White House, 1963,
and (b) the von
Kármán postage
stamp, 1992.
3. VON KÁRMÁN AND AGARD

Von Kármán’s original scientific work after 1952 is intimately connected with his creation of
AGARD. More specifically, he worked in what he preferred to call aerothermochemistry (a term
he had coined), a field combining fluid mechanics with chemical reaction processes. We refer
the reader to the twenty-fifth anniversary review “The AGARD Propulsion and Energetics Panel:

ANRV365-FL41-01 ARI 28 May 2008 5:14
1952–1977” (Penner 1977), which was published as an official NATO document (labeled AGARD-
AR-III), and an earlier administrative history of AGARD, “AGARD History 1952–1968,” which
was edited by F.L. Wattendorf, who served as the initial administrative director of the AGARD
office in Paris.
AGARD was formed approximately six years after the conclusion of World War II. Through-
out most of Europe, aeronautical research was at the very beginnings of reconstruction and ad-
vancement at that time. U.S. dollars were being funneled through the Marshall plan to former
friends and foes alike in a historically unprecedented effort to assist in rebuilding. In 1952, the
AGARD/NATO Combustion Panel was the first AGARD panel to be established, but von Kármán
planned from the beginning to include all disciplines needed for aerospace exploration and aero-
nautical engineering.
Von Kármán had become personally involved in combustion research approximately one year
earlier. He believed that theoretical combustion analyses, in which authors had attempted to
utilize chemical rate processes in conjunction with the equations of fluid mechanics, had not been
properly executed. His sense of aesthetics was offended because he felt that the results of theoretical
studies were not at once apparent from the inputs and often could not be explained in appealing
physical terms. Moreover, other scientists’ work did not always meet his standards of rigor and
insight. At times, von Kármán actually used more colorful language, which precipitated a lively
debate at the 1952 International Combustion Symposium that did not suggest the fundamentally
high regard with which he viewed the pioneering works of Bernard Lewis, Günther von Elbe,
Joseph Hirschfelder, and others. The public debates and disagreements did not portray anything
more than efforts to arrive at mutual understanding, as was demonstrated by the presence of
Bernard Lewis, President of the Combustion Institute, at von Kármán’s inauguration into the
Papal Academy of Science in Rome in December 1953.
The AGARD Combustion Panel began with the mission to place combustion research, as
mentioned above, on a firm theoretical basis and to apply appropriate formulations of chemical
kinetics to the solution of combustion problems. The panel’s name was modified to accommodate
significant shifts in its efforts, reflecting changes in the research activities of NATO scientists and
engineers, as well as the changing emphasis of the research needs of the NATO community. The
panel’s history has been characterized by adaptation, timely evolution, the redefinition of primary
mission objectives with the appointment of new members, and pioneering research contributions
to those areas that became especially pertinent to NATO Research and Development in the
aeronautical and later aerospace sciences.
Many research activities in areas related to aerothermochemistry were associated with the
AGARD organization. It may be useful to consult Penner (1977) for descriptions of the activities
and publications. Table 1 contains a list of definitive fundamental texts published by commercial
firms under the auspices of AGARD to emphasize the significant impact the organization ulti-
mately had on progress in the field. Some AGARD reports and publications remain of current
interest, including an engine-noise report (Powers & Pianko 1970), an aircraft-pollution summary
(Libby 1973), a book on the oscillatory behavior of nozzles (Crocco & Sirignano 1967), a lecture
on the effects of engine instability (Fuhs 1974), and the definitive contribution on solid propellants
(Williams et al. 1969).
Von Kármán was both the administrative leader and the scientific head of AGARD. In this
latter capacity, he attended many scientific meetings in all the fields of science and engineering
covered by AGARD and contributed to many publications not bearing his name through his
wise comments and stimulating insights. For example, he chaired a plenary session at a meeting
sponsored by the Adriatic Electric Society in Venice, Italy (October 1–4, 1955), which aimed
at augmenting electricity supplies to the region over the long-term. Penner (1956) had been
6 Penner et al.
ANRV365-FL41-01 ARI 28 May 2008 5:14
Table 1 AGARDographs (hard-cover books) sponsored by the Combustion, Combustion and Propulsion, and the
Propulsion and Energetics Panel, 1952–1976
AGARDograph
number Author(s) Title Publisher and year of publication
4 B.P. Mullins Spontaneous Ignition of Liquid Fuels, 117 pp Butterworths Scientific Publications,
London, 1955
7 S.S. Penner Introduction to the Study of Chemical Reactions Butterworths Scientific Publications,
in Flow Systems, 86 pp London, 1955
8 L. Crocco & S.-I. Cheng Theory of Combustion Instability in Liquid Butterworths Scientific Publications,
Propellant Rocket Motors, 200 pp London, 1956
31 S.S. Penner & Explosions, Detonations, Flammability and Pergamon Press, Ltd., London, 1959
B.P Mullins Ignition, 287 pp
47 G. Tiné Gas Sampling and Chemical Analysis in Pergamon Press, Ltd., London, 1961
Combustion Processes, 94 pp
75 G.H. Markstein Nonsteady Flame Propagation, 328 pp Pergamon Press, Ltd., London, 1964
96 A.E. Fuhs Instrumentation for High Speed Plasma Flow, Gordon and Breach Science
180 pp Publishers, New York, 1965
116 F.A. Williams, M. Barrère Fundamental Aspects of Solid Propellant Technivision Services, Slough,
& N.C. Huang Rockets, 791 pp England, 1969
129 I. Glassman & The Performance of Chemical Propellants, Technivision Services, Slough,
R.F. Sawyer 143 pp England, 1969
130 E.R.G. Eckert & Measurement Techniques in Heat Transfer, Technivision Services, Slough,
R.J. Goldstein 522 pp England, 1970
invited to speak on models in aerothermochemistry and presented his entire paper privately to
von Kármán during a three-hour session a few days before the meeting. As the result of this
evaluation, Penner modified the paper and intended in his oral presentation to accommodate von
Kármán’s suggestions. Possibly because of his familiarity with the content of Penner’s manuscript,
von Kármán allowed, as session chair, Luigi Broglio of the University of Rome to give a long
presentation in impeccable melodious Italian without interruption, leaving no time for Penner’s
presentation. Following a few comments and rebuttals on Broglio’s presentation, von Kármán
invited Penner to present his work “briefly but intelligibly” during the essentially nonexistent
time remaining before the scheduled cocktail party. In response to this request for extreme
brevity, Penner stated the title of his presentation and distributed preprints to the audience.
Von Kármán was not in the least surprised by this course of events, assured Penner that he had
just presented the best lecture of his career, and invited the audience to proceed to the on-time
beginning of the cocktail party. Von Kármán was indeed right; Penner received more expressions
of appreciation for this unpresented contribution than for any other lecture he ever gave.
In his capacity as a primary technical adviser to the U.S. Air Force, von Kármán was often con-
sulted on critical military issues. The photograph in Figure 1 was taken during a 1957 discussion
at the Rocketdyne Corporation that dealt with hypersonic re-entry heat transfer to space vehicles
and vehicle survivability, a field to which Caltech aeronautical engineer Lester Lees made pivotal
contributions.
4. SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTIONS OF VON KÁRMÁN (1952–1964)

When assessing the current impact of von Kármán’s contributions to his or her fields of interest, one
must acknowledge how the present widespread availability of computing power and increasingly

ANRV365-FL41-01 ARI 28 May 2008 5:14
sophisticated experimental techniques has dramatically changed the nature and practice of research
and the problems that can be examined in this field. Physical insight and penetrating analyses to
distill the essential features of problems were crucial in earlier times, and they still remain important
today. It is in this setting that von Kármán demonstrated his talents in engineering and applied
science.
Basic combustion studies included analyses of laminar, turbulent, and diffusion flames; ig-
nition phenomena both in the homogeneous phase and in laminar mixing layers; combustion
spectroscopy; burning mechanisms of double-base and composite solid propellants; burning of sin-
gle droplets, and droplet arrays or sprays; flame stabilization; spontaneous ignition; mechanisms
of carbon formation; transport phenomena; and similarity parameters in combustion. Coupled
with these fundamental studies were such investigations as low-pressure (high-altitude) burning,
combustion phenomena in pulse jets, rocket-engine scaling, and ramjet combustion phenomena.
Among the initial impacts of these activities was the development of research centers in conjunc-
tion with the major aeronautical and propulsion research laboratories of NATO countries. During
1952, U.S. scientists dominated colloquium contributions, along with major participation from the
United Kingdom and France. By 1956, major research centers had been created in many NATO
countries. Von Kármán’s prestige, interest, active participation, and personal contributions played
important roles in assuring the almost immediate and widespread integration of research findings
into aeronautics curricula everywhere, including scientific rocket-engine scaling, which led to the
construction of stably and reliably operating liquid- and solid-fuel rockets of progressively larger
sizes.
It is noteworthy how von Kármán became interested in combustion science. From his vast
experience with and understanding of fluid mechanics and molecular and turbulent transport pro-
cesses, he knew that these topics were relevant to engineering problems of propulsion. Moreover,
in observing rocket propulsion phenomena, he saw clearly that finite-rate exothermic chemical
reactions needed to be included along with these to obtain useful descriptions for such appli-
cations. The science of combustion as defined by the term aerothermochemistry thus emerged,
in his mind, as being fundamental to propulsion engineering. He began, in a suitably systematic
manner, to study the conservation equations from the background of multicomponent coexistent
continua in his Sorbonne Lectures (1951–1952). He addressed both deflagrations and detonations,
the two types of combustion waves, from the viewpoint of characteristic times in an article in
L’Aerotechnica (von Kármán 1953). Most of his original contributions to combustion, however,
concerned deflagrations because he rightly identified the deflagration problem as central to the
science underlying most applications to propulsion, encompassing fluid flow, the diffusion of heat
and of chemical species, finite-rate chemistry with overall heat release, and basic thermodynamic
principles.
Aerothermochemistry, embodied in deflagration theory, was the final scientific research topic in
which von Kármán worked, and, at this late stage in his career, he enlisted the participation of others
in his research. Essentially all his original contributions in this area were made in collaboration with
the younger engineering scientists Gregorio Millán in Madrid and Penner at Caltech. Their work
on deflagrations proved to be of great interest at meetings of the Combustion Institute in the 1950s.
Von Kármán attended the Fourth International Combustion Symposium at MIT in September
1952, where he coauthored a paper (von Kármán & Millán 1953) on the shape and two-dimensional
temperature profiles of a laminar flame adjacent to a cold wall, based on a thermal theory (that is,
a description involving only one differential equation instead of a system of differential equations)
with one-step Arrhenius chemistry. He also coauthored a paper on the thermal theory published
in the Max Born Commemorative Volume (see Figure 5) (von Kármán & Penner 1954b) to which
he had been invited to submit a paper together with other peers of the distinguished retiree.
8 Penner et al.
ANRV365-FL41-01 ARI 28 May 2008 5:14
Figure 5
Contents and faceplate of the 1954 commemorative volume honoring Max Born to which von Kármán was invited to contribute a
paper (highlighted in yellow) along with others of his peers. While von Kármán was at Göttingen, he and Max Born wrote a classical
paper together on the specific heat of solids.
There were lively round-table discussions at the 1952 MIT Combustion Symposium among
von Kármán, Hirschfelder (from Wisconsin), and others on the basic formulations and future
challenges of deflagration theory, both laminar (Pease et al. 1953) and turbulent (Williams et al.
1953). Von Kármán was highly respected for his interest in studying the influences of real chemistry
in laminar deflagrations and was invited to present a paper at the Sixth International Combustion
Symposium, held at Yale in August 1956, which he prepared in collaboration with Millán and
Penner. The paper gave a general formulation; compared various approaches; addressed ozone
and hydrazine decomposition flames, as well as the hydrogen-bromine flame (von Kármán et al.
1957); and in some cases (such as the one-step hydrazine-flame analysis) reviewed earlier published
work (von Kármán & Penner 1954b). It also provided a perspective on the competing work of
the Wisconsin group ( J.O. Hirschfelder, C.F. Curtis, D.E. Campbell, and R.B. Bird), citing their
widely used book The Molecular Theory of Gases and Liquids (Hirschfelder et al. 1954), and addressed
the earlier work of B. Lewis and G. von Elbe. Von Kármán referenced the even earlier work of
the chemists C. Tanford and R.N. Pease and commented on the earliest investigations, namely,
those of the Russian school by N.N. Semenov and by Y.B. Zel’dovich and D. Frank-Kamenetski,
in his evaluation of the published literature.

ANRV365-FL41-01 ARI 28 May 2008 5:14
An important publication on combustion theory (von Kármán & Penner 1954a) deals with the
structures and propagation velocities of steady, one-dimensional, laminar deflagrations. In fact,
this paper motivated F.A. Williams to work in the field of combustion. The analysis presaged
developments that took place in the 1980s as it describes the first use of the chemical-kinetic
steady-state approximation for active reaction intermediaries in flame theory for the purpose of
obtaining analytical expressions for the burning velocity. Whereas von Kármán and his colleagues
favored deriving analytical formulas that were easy to use, Hirschfelder and his colleagues preferred
to solve the system of ordinary differential equations numerically. Both tasks were difficult in
the 1950s, especially the latter because of the primitive state of computer development. When
detailed chemistry was taken into account, one needed elaborate expansions about boundaries to
begin integration, and the numerical integrations usually tended to diverge whether marching
upstream or downstream. The physical insight necessary to obtain analytical approximations also
was difficult because the formal useful asymptotic methods, such as rate-ratio asymptotics (treating
ratios of reaction rates of different elementary chemical steps as large or small parameters), were
not available until the 1980s. When these methods did become available, many results resembling
those of von Kármán and his collaborators began to appear (e.g., see Peters & Williams 1987,
Seshadri et al. 1994, and the review by Williams 1993).
It was known in the 1950s that the mathematical problem of steady, one-dimensional defla-
gration was ill-posed. There was a cold-boundary difficulty in that the zero-gradient boundary
conditions at upstream infinity were inconsistent with the differential equations. Some favored
introducing a hypothetical flame holder to remedy the problem, but von Kármán and his asso-
ciates preferred instead an ignition temperature below which reaction rates were artificially set
to zero, a simpler and more straightforward approach that yielded results essentially independent
of the ignition temperature over a reasonable range of values. The Russian school avoided the
cold-boundary difficulty by focusing on expansions about the hot boundary. The von Kármán
group compared various approximations, showing that some were better than others for one-step
model chemistry. They also showed that when the Lewis numbers of all chemical species are equal
to unity, the total enthalpy remains constant throughout the deflagration, thereby disproving the
erroneous concept that an excess enthalpy was necessary for flame propagation to occur in a steady,
self-supporting manner. In an unpublished work, von Kármán also analyzed the influences of heat
loss on laminar flames and flammability limits (Penner & Mullins 1959). He thus was a leading,
active figure in the combustion community in the 1950s.
5. THE VON KÁRMÁN LEGACY

Von Kármán’s important seminal ideas in combustion are not often cited today as the field, which
has advanced on many fronts, tends to overlook its origins. The breadth of von Kármán’s con-
tributions, however, is so great that studies he initiated became important in unexpected places.
For example, he was the first to observe that there was a nice self-similar solution for viscous
flow adjacent to a disk spinning in its plane. His flow-field solution for this viscous pump, the
von Kármán swirling flow, defines a configuration that recently appeared in combustion when the
spinning disk was constructed from a combustible material and was set on fire. Current studies of
diffusion flames in this configuration are proving to be remarkably rich, exhibiting, under proper
conditions, flat diffusion-flame spirals adjacent to the disk that rotate at speeds different from
that of the disk, usually in the opposite direction, and that maintain their shapes while their noses
meander in petal-like patterns (Nayagam & Williams 2000, Williams 2004). Thus, we continually
encounter new natural phenomena, some of which would perhaps not be seen if it were not for von
10 Penner et al.
ANRV365-FL41-01 ARI 28 May 2008 5:14
Kármán’s pioneering studies. From this perspective, his largely unacknowledged legacy persists in
combustion science.
Contributing to this legacy are current activities by investigators with expertise in fluid me-
chanics and aerothermochemistry in Europe and America. For example, the scientific combustion
research of Millán’s student Liñán in Madrid follows von Kármán’s tradition (e.g., see the discus-
sion in Liñán & Williams 1993). Major present-day practitioners of rigorous von Kármán–type
methods in aerothermochemistry include Buckmaster (originally from the United Kingdom, now
in the United States), Clavin (France), Liñán (Spain), Matalon (United States), Peters (Germany),
Sivashinsky (originally from Russia, now in Israel), and Williams (United States). This group coau-
thored the lead-off presentation (Buckmaster et al. 2005) at the July 2004 Thirtieth International
Symposium on Combustion in Chicago. The authors were invited in commemoration of the fifti-
eth anniversary of the founding of the Combustion Institute, harking back to the above-mentioned
debates of von Kármán and others at the fourth symposium, two years before the Institute was
formed.
Von Kármán’s fundamental advances in turbulence and in combustion have now evolved into
continuing studies of turbulent combustion, notably in work by Peters, Clavin, and Williams [e.g.,
see Peters’s (2000) monograph on turbulent combustion, Clavin’s (1985) review article on flamelet
dynamics in nonuniform streams, and Libby & Williams’ (1980, 1994) two edited tutorial volumes,
the second one building on the first to expose more advanced material in modern approaches to
descriptions of turbulent, chemically reacting flows]. This subject would have appealed to von
Kármán not only because it involves fundamental problems in the disciplines of turbulence and
combustion, but also because it has practical importance in terms of energy conservation and
environmental issues.
We indicate above that von Kármán addressed detonation and chemical kinetics in combustion
and also that research combining these two types of studies continues today, for example, in the
joint research of European and U.S. investigators that follow in his tradition (e.g., see Sanchez et al.
2001, Clavin & Williams 2002). Many other current scientific activities follow in his tradition.
We may assess von Kármán’s lasting contributions to fluid mechanics from various perspectives.
With regard to his institutional contributions, the von Kármán Institute near Brussels continues
to provide advanced training in the application of basic principles to aeronautical, industrial, and
meteorological problems. Students from NATO countries stay for an academic year or for short
periods involving a lecture series on special topics. The AGARD Fluid Dynamics Panel helped
establish the institute and was responsible for recommending its annual budget to NATO’s Science
Office. In addition to its training function, the institute continues to organize specialists’ meetings
on topics of both applied and fundamental interest and to support a vigorous publication program.
During a period of approximately 25 years, the AGARD Fluid Dynamics Panel organized spe-
cialists’ meetings, generally two each year, and published the associated proceedings as AGARDo-
graphs, similar to those listed in Table 1, on a wide range of fundamental and applied topics, from
hydrodynamic stability, to surveys of data on turbulent boundary layers, techniques for measuring
heat transfer in hypersonic wind tunnels, and the gas dynamics of lasers. Some AGARDographs
remain of current interest, whereas others represent historical status reports.
The present-day significance of von Kármán’s contributions to fluid dynamics relates to the
training of undergraduate and graduate students who go on to careers in academia and industries
in aeronautical, chemical, and mechanical engineering. His ideas are included in current fluid
mechanics texts, both introductory and advanced. Introductory fluid mechanics courses continue
to set forth his momentum integral method with application to both laminar and turbulent flows.
Laboratory courses devoted to fluid mechanics also apply this method as a means of determining
the drag of a body from the momentum deficit in its wake. Von Kármán’s (1921) analysis of the

ANRV365-FL41-01 ARI 28 May 2008 5:14
flow induced by a rotating disc continues to expose students to the principles of flow similitude
and to the valuable techniques based on physical insight, which he frequently employed when
reducing the partial differential equations of fluid flows to tractable form. Similarly, classroom
and laboratory presentations of the von Kármán vortex street (von Kármán & Rubach 1912)
expose students to the notions of unsteady flows and of flow stability. In the analysis of turbulent
boundary layers, von Kármán’s (1930) mixing length theory provides a physically and intuitively
appealing model for turbulent transport and permits calculations of skin friction, heat transfer,
and rate of boundary layer growth. Courses concerned with aerodynamics continue to present his
contributions to slender body similitude in each of the three speed ranges. In more advanced fluid
dynamics courses, von Kármán’s (1948) seminal contributions to isotropic turbulence (along with
those of Taylor, Prandtl, and Kolmogoroff ) remain central to the development of the subject.
Finally, although not restricted to problems in fluid dynamics, von Kármán & Biot’s (1940) book
on applied mathematics presents many interesting examples within the context of pedagogy.
The Soviet Union’s successful launching of Sputnik on October 4, 1957, and President
Kennedy’s subsequent initiative to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth by the
end of the decade ignited an immense effort to understand and quantify the deformation and insta-
bility of lightweight thin structures (thin rods, plates, and shells), to which von Kármán had made
pioneering contributions, dating back to his 1906 paper (von Kármán 1956 [1906]), including
seminal works on postbuckling of plates (von Kármán 1910) and spherical shells (von Kármán &
Tsien 1939). The ensuing scientific excitement in the field of structural stability revived his interest
in the subject. In collaboration with his assistant A.D. Kerr, he prepared a lecture on the subject
that he presented at Brown University when he received his twenty-seventh honorary doctorate.
Von Kármán & Kerr (1965) presented a revised version of the paper for the E. Schwerin Memo-
rial Volume. Addressing the instability of thin spherical shells, the paper beautifully deciphers a
complex physical phenomenon via a simple and elegant closed-form solution of a model problem
that encompasses all the essential features of the original problem (i.e., nonlinear postbuckling
response, the formation of plastic hinges, and the influence of imperfections; most importantly,
they show that for curved thin structures, there is no justification to consider the equal energy
concept for determining the buckling load because the structure can snap into a state of higher
energy and stay there). Nearly all textbooks and review papers on the subject cite this work, as
well as von Kármán’s earlier contributions to the subject of the instability of plates and shells (von
Kármán 1910; von Kármán & Tsien 1939, 1941; von Kármán et al. 1932). Von Kármán (1910)
shows that plates (unlike shells) are not generally sensitive to imperfections, but they have con-
siderable postbuckling reserves manifested through the formation of localized plastic hinges. In a
later paper, von Kármán and colleagues (1932) further demonstrate that the maximum distributed
load is proportional to the square root of it elastic modulus, to the yield stress, and to the square
of its thickness, but, remarkably, it is independent of the other plate dimensions. Here, again,
they use a simple yet elegant analogy (a hallmark of von Kármán’s legacy) to obtain closed-form
expressions that encapsulate the physics of the problem, yielding results in good accord with those
of experiments.
Another subject in the mechanics of solids that has benefited from von Kármán’s physical insight
and mathematical skill is plastic waves in solids, and even today it continues to bear his footprint.
Von Kármán & Duwez (1950) sent their paper to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
in 1941, but, because of its bearing on problems relating to national defense, its publication was
delayed until 1950. Attending a conference held at the National Academy of Sciences in early
1940, von Kármán was motivated to develop a theory to reveal physical features inherent in the
inelastic response of solids subjected to high-velocity impacts. By the end of 1941, he had worked
out the problem of stress waves generated in a cylindrical rod by a longitudinal impact of sufficient
12 Penner et al.
ANRV365-FL41-01 ARI 28 May 2008 5:14
velocity to produce axial plastic strains. Both his fundamental theoretical results and the associated
experimental work (completed by Duwez) were published in classified National Defense Research
Committee reports (A-29 and A-33, respectively) in 1942, and later as a single paper (von Kármán
& Duwez 1950), laying the foundation for an entire field of inelastic wave and shock propagation
in solids with nonlinear constitutive properties. This elegant pioneering work continues to be
cited and used as a stepping stone to illustrate the effects of material nonlinearity on its dynamic
response.
6. CONCLUSION
This review of von Kármán’s later work and lasting legacy inevitably supports the assessment that
von Kármán was a great engineer, a gifted applied mathematician, and a first-rate applied scientist.
His biography in Wikipedia lists 15 important physical phenomena bearing his name (e.g., from
Foppl–von Kármán equations, to von Kármán integral equation, and von Kármán vortex street).
Von Kármán’s contributions parallel in some measure his sequence of appointments, beginning
with conducting singularly productive research at Göttingen (1908 to 1912), where he honed his
analytical tools and participated in path-breaking research with such outstanding scientists as Max
Born; to building the great school of engineering at Aachen (1912 to 1930), which remains an
outstanding center for engineering research and development; and founding, guiding, and growing
a preeminent school of aeronautical engineering in the United States at Caltech (1930 to 1952).
Finally he became an international statesman, bridge builder between friend and friend or former
friend and foe for an international community devoted to cooperation for the common good in
wide-ranging areas of engineering and applied science, while expanding his personal requirements
for intellectual satisfaction by broadening his areas of research to encompass new types of physical
phenomena.
At the personal level, von Kármán always sought the best in the people he worked with and
bolstered ambition and confidence in those who had the good fortune of being involved with his
work. He had a storehouse of anecdotes and was a wonderful guest not only for his colleagues
but especially for the females whom he happened to meet. His charming and elegant European
manners together with his endless store of interesting stories enchanted everyone. There was a
story printed in the Istanbul press after a NATO meeting there during the early 1950s about a
young, pretty belly dancer who ignored all overtures made to her in order to greet von Kármán
personally and thank him for visiting her country (which probably was a spontaneous rather than
an arranged gesture). Now, many years after his death, we still recall many of his anecdotes. One
of Penner’s favorite stories relates to a working dinner with von Kármán in Paris by the Seine
during the mid-1950s when von Kármán observed prophetically, “when you grow old, you will be
invited to work pro bono (meaning without compensation) on many issues. At that time, you will
be paid exactly what you are worth as a scientist or engineer.”
APPENDIX: THE INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF ASTRONAUTICS

During the late 1930s and early 1940s, von Kármán, like most Americans, became heavily occupied
with impending and developing war problems and associated new weaponry. Together with his
legal adviser Andrew Haley, he founded the Aerojet rocket company in Azusa, California, not far
from Pasadena. Aerojet was later acquired by the General Tire and Rubber Company and survives
to this day as an active arm of Gencorp. Aerojet rocket experts were early developers of composite
solid propellants, which were formulated to absorb radiation of all wavelengths almost as efficiently
as black bodies. This feature prevented the types of internal fissuring and internal ignition that

ANRV365-FL41-01 ARI 28 May 2008 5:14
plagued early designs of double-base propellants with nitroglycerine and nitrocellulose as the
dominant active components and thereby made the Aerojet-produced propulsion systems relatively
free of failures.
One of von Kármán’s Caltech students, F. Malina, had considerable artistic talent, and among
his creations was a 1942 drawing of von Kármán’s Caltech collaborators engaging in a lively
discussion. Malina also wrote a pioneering article on rocket designs for space flight. Shortly after
the conclusion of World War II, he found himself identified as a communist collaborator during
the McCarthy inquisitions. Rather than facing a hearing, he and his family moved to Paris, where
he embarked on a new career as an artist. He produced a unique series of mobiles and received
a detailed listing in a multivolume French encyclopedia of artists, widely used by art collectors
during the 1950 to 1990 period, under the title of the editor Benezit. Malina also became the
founding editor of the successful art journal Leonardo (named after Leonardo da Vinci).
After founding AGARD, von Kármán decided that it was necessary to acknowledge excellence
in rocketry and space flight and founded the prestigious International Academy of Astronautics
around 1962–1963. With active management by Malina, von Kármán recruited top German engi-
neers, many of whom had emigrated to the United States (e.g., von Braun; the husband-and-wife
team, Sänger; Stuhlinger), as well as Russian, French, English, and U.S. experts (e.g., H. Dryden,
the head of NASA), to serve as the initial members. (Penner was elected a corresponding member
in 1964 and a member in 1965.) The academy has become one of von Kármán’s successful legacies
with a substantial international roster of aerospace engineering luminaries and the publication
of a dedicated journal (Acta Astronautica). With far more nominees in any one year than can be
elected, the academy now has a prestigious position to acknowledge expertise in the disciplines
contributing to space exploration and space science.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
The authors are not aware of any biases that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this
review.
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Article in Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics · January 2009

Stanford Soll Penner Paul A. Libby

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Von Kármán’s Work: The Later

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2. THE METHODOLOGY OF VON KÁRMÁN

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3. VON KÁRMÁN AND AGARD

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4. SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTIONS OF VON KÁRMÁN (1952–1964)

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5. THE VON KÁRMÁN LEGACY

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APPENDIX: THE INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF ASTRONAUTICS

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Volume 1 of Collected Works of Theodore von Kármán, 1956.

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