| NASA Center: |
Ames Research Center |
|---|
| Image # : |
LAL90-3738 |
|---|
| Date : |
01/01/1920
|
|---|
|
Title
Joseph Ames
Full Description
Dr. Joseph Sweetman Ames at his desk at the NACA headquarters. Dr. Ames
was a founding member of NACA (National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics), appointed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1915.
Ames took on NACA's most challenging assignments but mostly represented
physics. He chaired the Foreign Service Committee of the newly-founded
National Research Council, oversaw the NACA's patent cross-licensing
plan that allowed manufacturers to share technologies. Ames expected
the NACA to encourage engineering education. He pressed universities
to train more aerodynamicists, then structured NACA to give young
engineers on-the-job training.
Ames gave the NACA a focused vision that was research-based and decided
that aerodynamics was the most important field of endeavor. He
championed the work of theorists like Max Munk. The world class wind
tunnels at Langley Aeronautical laboratory reflected his vision as well
as the faith Congress put in him.
Ames became chairman of the NACA main committee in 1927. Two years
later he accepted the Collier Trophy on behalf on the NACA. He kept the
NACA alive when Herbert Hoover tried to eliminate it and transfer its
duties to industry. Ames accepted a nomination by Air Minister Hermann
Goring to the Deutsche Akademie der Luftfartforschung. Ames then
considered it an honor, many Americans did, and was surprised to learn
about the massive Nazi investment in aeronautical infrastructure, then
six times larger than the NACA.
Ames urged the funding for a second laboratory and expansion of the
NACA facilities to prepare for war. A stroke in May 1936 paralyzed the
right side of his body. He immediately resigned as chairman of the NACA
executive committee and in October 1937 he resigned from the NACA main
committee. On June 8, 1944 the NACA officially dedicated its new
laboratory in Sunnyvale California to Joseph S. Ames. Ames died in 1943, having
never stepped foot in the new laboratory that bears his name; the Ames
Aeronautical Laboratory (known today as the Ames Research Center).
In a letter to William Durand who led the dedication ceremony, Henry H.
"Hap" Arnold called "Dr. Ames the great architect of aeronautical
science... It is most appropriate that it should now be named the
Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, for in this laboratory, as in the
hearts of airmen and aeronautical scientists, the memory of Joseph
S. Ames will be enshrined as long as men shall fly."
Keywords
NACA Joseph Ames Joseph Sweetman Ames
Subject Category
NASA Management, NACA-ARC,
Reference Numbers
- Center:
AMES
- Center Number:
LAL90-3738
- GRIN DataBase Number:
GPN-2000-001639
Source Information
- Creator/Photographer: NACA
- Original Source: DIGITAL
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Updated October 31, 2002
• History Questions: NASA History Office
• Responsible NASA Official: Steve Garber
• Author: Michael Hahn. Editor: Dwayne A. Day
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