Arthur Robert Kantrowitz

Trained as a physicist and, because of economic constraints of the depression, found himself at an aeronautics laboratory where the chief discipline was fluid mechanics. He later became the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Avco Everett Research Laboratorym which he founded in 1955, and was Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on the Science Court in 1975-1976. He pioneered in physical gas dynamics, reentry from space, magnetohydrodynamic energy conversion, high-energy lasers, and heart assist devices. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. In his later years, he was concerned with the interaction of science and technology with society.