- Nikolai Zhukovsky
Nikolai Yegorovich Zhukovsky ( _ru. Николай Егорович Жуковский) (OldStyleDate|January 17|1847|January 5 –
March 17 ,1921 ) was aRussia n scientist, founding father of modern aero- andhydrodynamics .Whereas contemporary scientists scoffed at the idea of human flight, Zhukovsky was the first to undertake the study of airflow.His name usually romanised as Joukovsky or Joukowsky in the literature. See for example
Joukowsky transform , alsoKutta-Schukowski ,Kutta-Joukowski and so on.Zhukovsky was born in the village Orekhovo,
Vladimir Oblast . He graduated from Moscow University in 1868. Since 1872 he was a professor at Imperial Technical School. He established the world's first Aerodynamic Institute in 1904 in Kachino nearMoscow . From 1918 he was the head ofTsAGI (Central AeroHydroDynamics Institute).He was the first engineer scientist to explain mathematically the origin of aerodynamic lift, through his circulation hypothesis, the first to dimension the lift force generated by a body moving through an ideal fluid as proportional to the velocity and the circulation around the body, and through a mathematical conformal transformation the first to define the shape of the aerodynamic profile having as essential elements a rounded nose (leading edge), double surface (finite thickness), cambered or straight, and a sharp tail (trailing edge). He built the first
wind tunnel in Russia.He is also responsible for the eponymous
water hammer equation used by civil engineers.A city near Moscow and Zhukovskiy crater on the Moon is named in his honor.
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