Ludwig Prandtl

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Ludwig Prandtl (1937)

Ludwig Prandtl (born February 4, 1875 in Freising , † August 15, 1953 in Göttingen ) was a German engineer. He made significant contributions to the fundamental understanding of fluid mechanics and developed boundary layer theory .

Life

Prandtl was born as the son of the agricultural scientist and professor Alexander Prandtl and his wife Magdalene. Ostermann born. The chemist Wilhelm Prandtl is his cousin. After attending the Freising Latin School and the Ludwigsgymnasium in Munich, Prandtl began his studies at the Technical University of Munich in 1894 . During his studies he became a member of the AGV Munich . After his graduation he became an assistant and later also the son-in-law of the famous mechanics professor August Föppl . He submitted his dissertation on November 14, 1899 to the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich as a “certified mechanical engineer”. In 1900 he was awarded the Dr. phil. awarded.

Professional beginnings

He then worked as an engineer at the Augsburg-Nuremberg machine factory on the development of factory systems. He first came into contact with fluid mechanics while working on an extraction system. From 1902 he was a professor at the Technical University of Hanover , with Carl Runge in particular campaigning for him. This made him the youngest professor in Prussia at the time. In a lecture at the 3rd International Congress of Mathematicians in August 1904, he introduced the hydrodynamic boundary layer and his boundary layer theory.

Goettingen

Ludwig Prandtl in 1904 with a water channel , the so-called Prandtl channel, for the visualization of flow processes

With the support of Felix Klein , he taught at the Georg-August University in Göttingen from September 1, 1904 . At first he was only an associate professor, which meant a decline compared to Hanover, but received a full professorship after he turned down a call to the TU Stuttgart. Theodore von Kármán was his doctoral student from 1906 to 1908 . Due to the boundary layer theory he developed, he was appointed head of the Aerodynamic Research Institute in Göttingen (AVA), the predecessor organization of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). In 1907 he researched the supersonic flow and the resulting shock waves, which were theoretically predicted as early as 1860 by the Göttingen mathematician Bernhard Riemann . In 1908 he built the first wind tunnel in Germany and developed a wing theory that influenced aircraft construction. In 1910 he researched turbulent currents and u. a. the influence of the Prandtl number later named after him .

During the First World War , the model research institute for flow research that was under construction was converted into the Research Institute for the Army and Navy , where, from 1917, bombing from airships and airplanes was also optimized. With Max Michael Munk and Albert Betz (who became his successor at the Aerodynamic Research Institute in Göttingen in 1936) he worked on an effective formula for investigating lift. In 1919 he produced an important wing theory that made it possible for the first time to develop wing profiles by means of theoretical studies. Prandtl also studied the compressibility of air at subsonic speed, also known as the Prandtl-Glauert transformation . From 1920 he worked with Adolf Busemann on a wind tunnel for supersonic flows. In 1922 he was the founding president of the Society for Applied Mathematics and Mechanics . In 1929 he developed a method for calculating supersonic nozzles, which is still used today e.g. B. is common in supersonic wind tunnels and rocket engines.

From 1925 to 1946, Prandtl was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Flow Research , which was set up thanks to his initiative. During the Second World War in 1942, he became chairman of the Reich Office for Research Management of the Reich Minister of Aviation and Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force , which was subordinate to Hermann Göring .

In the German-speaking area, after Prandtl, together with Cyril Frank Colebrook , an empirical approximation of the runoff with the pipe friction factor is named ( Prandtl-Colebrook formula , in the English-speaking area: Colebrook-White equation). Prandtl was also a pioneer in plasticity theory . His theory of plastic bodies fertilized soil mechanics when analyzing the ground failure. The Prandtl body , a rheological model, is named after him. In his honor, the German Aerospace Society awards the Ludwig-Prandtl-Ring for services through excellent own work on aviation science in all its disciplines .

family

He had been married to Gertrud Föppl, August Föppl's daughter, since 1909 and had two daughters. The younger daughter, Johanna (later: Johanna Vogel-Prandtl), later wrote a biography about her father. He was also the brother-in-law of Otto Föppl (mechanical engineer at the TH Braunschweig), Ludwig Föppl (mechanical engineer at the TH Munich) and Johannes (Hans) Thoma (electrical engineer at the TH Karlsruhe), the latter was married to Else Föppl.

Fonts

Stadtfriedhof Göttingen, grave of Ludwig Prandtl

In 1931 his textbook Guide through Fluid Mechanics was published , which was considered the standard work of fluid mechanics from the start. The Prandtl was later constantly updated by renowned fluid scientists and is available in the current 11th edition from 2002.

  • Guide through fluid mechanics , Springer Verlag, 13th edition. 2012, Springer Verlag, edited by Herbert Oertel , Martin Böhle
  • Collected papers: on applied mechanics, hydrodynamics and aerodynamics , Springer, 3 volumes 1961 (Eds. Walter Tollmien , Hermann Schlichting , Henry Görtler )
  • Four Treatises on Hydrodynamics and Aerodynamics: Low Friction Fluid; Wing theory, Part I and II; Screw propeller with minimal energy loss . Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Flow Research 1927, new edition by Albert Betz, Göttinger Universitätsverlag 2010.
  • Hydro- and aeromechanics , based on lectures by L. Prandtl from Oskar Tietjens , 2 volumes, Springer Verlag 1929, 1931

Honors

Incomplete list

Goettingen
Namesake
Ludwig-Prandtl-Strasse in Waltenhofen
Ludwig-Prandtl-Strasse in Weende (Göttingen)
Ludwig-Prandtl-Strasse in Berlin-Bohnsdorf
Ludwig-Prandtl-Strasse in Garching near Munich
Ludwig Prandtl lecture hall of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University of Munich
"Prandtl" moon crater (1970)
Ludwig Prandtl (research ship) (1983)
Prandtl body (series connection of a Hooke element with a St. Venant element )
Prandtl number (dimensionless number which relates the kinematic viscosity to the thermal diffusivity of a fluid)
Prandtl probe (flow measurement instrument for determining the dynamic pressure )
Awards, medals, orders
Ackermann-Teubner Memorial Prize (1918)
Golden Ring of Honor of the Free State of Bavaria (1926)
Grashof commemorative coin of the Association of German Engineers (1929)
Daniel Guggenheim Medal (1930)
Ernst Abbe Memorial Prize (1935)
Harnack Medal of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (1936)
Wilhelm Exner Medal (1951)
Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany , Great Cross of Merit (1953)
Golden Medal from the Royal Aeronautical Society
Academy memberships
Academy of Sciences in Göttingen (1914)
Fellow of the Royal Society (1928)
Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala (1928)
American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1929)
German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (1936)
Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences (1937)
Bavarian Academy of Sciences (1942)
Honorary doctorate
Technical University of Gdansk (1920)
ETH Zurich (1930)
German Technical University in Prague (1932)
Norwegian Technical University , Trondheim (1935)
Bucharest Polytechnic University (1942)
İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi (1952)
Honorary member
London Mathematical Society (1924)
Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (1930)
Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences, New York (1933)
German Rheological Society (1952)
Honorary positions
President of the German Aerospace Society

See also

literature

  • Michael Eckert : Ludwig Prandtl - flow researcher and science manager. Springer-Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg 2017, ISBN 978-3-662-49917-7 .
  • Michael Eckert: The dawn of fluid dynamics: a discipline between science and technology. Wiley, VCH 2006, ISBN 3-527-40513-5 .
  • Michael Eckert, Eberhard Bodenschatz: A life for turbulence. In: Spectrum of Science. October 2013, pp. 44–52.
  • Michael Eckert, Eberhard Bodenschatz: Prandtl and the Göttingen school. In: Peter A. Davidson, Yukio Kaneda, Keith Moffatt, Katepalli R. Sreenivasan (Eds.): A Voyage Through Turbulence. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2011, pp. 40-100.
  • Gerd EA Meier (Ed.): Ludwig Prandtl. A leader in fluid mechanics. Biographical articles on the work of Ludwig Prandtl. Vieweg, 2000, ISBN 3-528-02561-1 .
  • Johanna Vogel-Prandtl: Ludwig Prandtl. A picture of life. Memories, documents. Göttingen, Max Planck Inst. for flow research, 1993. (Univ.-Verlag, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-938616-34-2 ) (online)
  • Johanna Vogel-Prandtl: Ludwig Prandtl - a personal biography drawn from memories and correspondence. authorized translation by David A. Tigwell, Univ.-Verlag, Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-86395-160-3 . (on-line)
  • G. Schmitt, W. Schwipps: Pioneers of early aviation. Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach 1995, ISBN 3-8112-1189-7 .
  • Erich Truckenbrodt :  Prandtl, Ludwig. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 671 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Andreas Haka: Social networks in mechanical engineering at German university and non-university research institutions 1920–1970. (= Stuttgart contributions to the history of science and technology. Volume 6). Logos Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-8325-3695-4 .
  • Susanne Heim: Science without a conscience, MaxPlanckResearch Issue 2/2005, pp. 60–64

Web links

Commons : Ludwig Prandtl  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Association of Alter SVer (VASV): Address book. Membership directory of all old men. As of October 1, 1937. Hanover 1937, p. 172.
  2. ↑ Philosophical dissertation: Tipping phenomena, a case of unstable equilibrium .
  3. ^ WorldCat
  4. ↑ L. Prandtl: About fluid movement with very little friction . Negotiations III, Intern. Math. Kongress, Heidelberg, 1904, p. 484 (traduction anglaise: NACA Memo 452, 1928, repris dans Four Treatises on Hydrodynamics and Aerodynamics, Göttingen, 1927).
  5. ↑ Via fluid movement with very little friction. books.google.de, accessed on May 7, 2011 .
  6. ↑ Arne Schirrmacher: The physics in the great war. Physik Journal 13 (2014) No. 7, pp. 43-48.
  7. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 471.
  8. ↑ On the hardness of plastic bodies , Nachrichten Göttinger Akad. Wiss. 1920, (online)
  9. ^ Karl-Eugen Kurrer : The History of the Theory of Structures. Searching for Equilibrium . Ernst & Sohn , Berlin 2018, p. 336, ISBN 978-3-433-03229-9 .
  10. ↑ Andreas Haka: Social networks in mechanical engineering at German university and non-university research institutions 1920–1970. Logos, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-8325-3695-4 , pp. 108-109.
  11. ↑ Prandtl moon crater
  12. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Volume 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Series 3rd volume 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 193.
personal data
SURNAME Prandtl, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Freising
DATE OF DEATH 15th August 1953
Place of death Goettingen