WISLICENUS

GERMANY (see also List of Individuals)

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27.8.1903 Strasbourg/F - 2.4.1988 Santa Rosa CA/USA

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George Friedrich Wislicenus was born in the then German city Strassburg, today located in the French department Upper Rhine. He graduated in 1923 as a mechanical engineer from Würzburg University and moved to the United States, where he earned the Master of Science title in 1931 from the California Institute of Technology and the PhD title in 1934 under the guidance of Theodor von Karman (1881-1963). Wislicenus was a hydraulic engineer with Worthington Pumps and Machinery in Harrison NJ from 1935 to 1945, and then for three years active in the aircraft industry. He was appointed professor of mechanical engineering at the Johns Hopkins University and from 1954 directed the Garfield Thomas water tunnel at the Ordnance Research Laboratory, then the largest design worldwide. In parallel he was a professor of aeronautical engineering at the Pennsylvania State University, from where he retired in 1969. In 1979 he received the Applied Research Laboratory's Distinguished Performance Award.

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Wislicenus is known for several successful books, among which are his 1947 work on turbomachinery and the 1951 book on pumps. The turbomachinery book was considered to be one of the most authoritative in the design and reprinted by Dover Publications in 1965. He was a specialist in the field of fluid engineering, most specifically in the areas of turbomachinery, cavitation, compressors and pumping machinery. He was a pioneer in the transonic compressor field, and made notable contributions to the unified theory of turbomachinery. Around 1950, Wislicenus conducted research in hydrodynamic jet propulsion and participated at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories in the aircraft nuclear propulsion project ANP.

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_{Anonymous (1959). Wislicenus, Georg Friedrich. Who's who in engineering 8: 2712. Lewis: New York.}

_{Anonymous (1972). George F. Wislicenus. Mechanical Engineering 94(1): 76. P}

_{Robertson, J.M., Wislicenus, G.F., eds. (1969). Cavitation: State of knowledge. ASME Fluids engineering and applied mechanics conference: Evanston IL.}

_{Wislicenus, G.F. (1947). Fluid mechanics of turbomachinery. McGraw-Hill: New York.}

_{Wislicenus, G.F. (1967). Preliminary thoughts on possible approaches to the problem of form design in engineering: A report to the National Science Foundation. Pennsylvania State University: University Park PA.}

_{Wislicenus, S. (2003). George F. Wislicenus. Personal communication. P}