- Antonio Ferri
Antonio Ferri (
5 April 1912 -28 December 1975 ) was an Italian scientist, prominent in the field ofaerodynamics , with a specialization inhypersonic andsupersonic flight.Born in 1912 in
Norcia ,Italy , from 1937 he conducted research inGuidonia Montecelio , where the most prominent and advanced research on high-speed aerodynamics was taking place. Among the work he conducted there were spectacular experiments in 1939–1940 with supersonicwind tunnel s.During
World War II , in the period of theItalian Social Republic (or Salò Republic), three days after the Germans occupiedRome onSeptember 10 ,1943 , Ferri bluffed his way back into the facility at Guidonia, destroyed equipment, filled a trunk with documents, secluded his wife and family near his family home in theApennine Mountains (from which they later moved on to an Adriatic fishing village), and took to the hills with an anti-Fascist guerrilla band. [Harvnb|Dawidoff|1994|p=185.] He eventually made his way toRome after it was liberated by the Allies, where he made contact with OSS agentMoe Berg and began to work with him translating key documents from the trunk, also passing on his knowledge of the achievements of German science during the war. [Harvnb|Dawidoff|1994|p=186.]The facilities at Guidonia were destroyed in the course of the fighting. In 1944, Ferri was brought to the leading American research center in his field, the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics inLangley, Virginia , where he continued as a major figure in his field.In the immediate postwar period, he studied the use of a wing profile for high-speed aircraft and developed the
Schlieren Flow Visualization method of predicting the impact ofshock wave s on aircraft wings. He then turned at length to the problem ofatmospheric reentry , hypersonic thermofluid dynamics, as applied to the study of supersonic and hypersonicjet engine s. He also conducted important studies in the fields of supersonic combustion andaerodynamic heating of high speed aircraft. In all these areas, he made key contributions to the advancement of aerospace engineering.Ferri died in 1975 on
Long Island ,New York ,USA .References
* This article draws heavily on the article of the same name in the Italian Wikipedia.
* Citation
last =Dawidoff
first =Nicholas
author-link = Nicholas Dawidoff
year =1994
title =The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg
place =New York
publisher =Vintage Books
isbn =0-679-76289-2.
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