MUNK

GERMANY (see also List of Individuals)

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22.10.1890 Hamburg/D - 21.6.1986 Rehoboth Beach DE/USA

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Max Munk submitted a PhD thesis to the University of Göttingen in 1919 once having concluded studies at Hannover University. He collaborated then with the Zeppelin works in Friedrichshafen and was around 1920 an associate of Ludwig Prandtl (1875-1953). He stayed from 1921 to 1926 at NACA as a chief aerodynamicist, from where he moved to the Westinghouse Company first and one year later to Alexander Airplane Company in 1928. He had also a position at the Catholic University of America, Washington. Munk was one of the first of a long series of aerodynamicists to leave Germany. He was finally a physicist at the Naval Ordnance Lab, Washington DC where he was an expert in aero and gas dynamics.

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Munk introduced the linearized theory into computational aerodynamics to simplify airfoil calculations significantly. Already during his stay at Göttingen University, he contributed significantly to aerodynamics with detailed experiments in wind tunnels. Another research contributed to the relation between the airfoil span and its resistance. He also developed a variable density wind tunnel at NACA in 1923. Munk probed NACA's wind tunnel and suggested compressing the air to twenty atmospheres. Tests made on a one-twentieth scale model then correlated with data from a full-scale plane at normal atmospheric pressure. Munk also contributed to the understanding of the induced drag, the center of pressure in airfoil theory, interference aerodynamics of multibody lifting systems, a general theory of the biplane, the propeller and windmill theory, and the apparent mass theory.

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_{Anonymous (1955). Munk, Max M. American men of science 1: 1384. Bowker: New York. Anonymous (1972). Max Munk. Astronautics and Aeronautics 10(3): 75. P}

_{Jones, R.T. (1977). Max Michael Munk. Recollections from an earlier period in American aeronautics. Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics 9: 5. P}

_{Munk, M.M. (1915). Die Modellversuchsanstalt des Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Zeitschrift für Flugtechnik und Motorluftschiffahrt 6(13/14): 103-105.}

_{Munk, M.M. (1934). Aerodynamics of airships. Aerodynamic theory 6: 32-48, W.F. Durand, ed.}

_{Dover: New York.}

_{Munk, M.M. (1981). My early aerodynamic research - Thoughts and memories. Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics 13: 1-7. P}

_{Prandtl, L. (1923). Ergebnisse der AVA zu Göttingen 1. Oldenburg: München.}