ROTT

HUNGARY (see also List of Individuals)

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6.10.1917 Budapest/H - 10.8.2006 Palo Alto CA/USA

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Miklós (Nicholas) Rott graduated as a mechanical engineer from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH in 1940 and gained there his PhD in 1943. He stayed at its Institute of Aerodynamics then directed by Jakob Ackeret (1898-1981) until 1951. Rott was then appointed professor of fluid dynamics at Cornell University, Ithaca NY and in 1960 moved as professor of engineering to the University of California in Los Angeles. In 1967, he returned to ETH as professor of fluid dynamics and finally was a visiting professor in the Aeronautical Institute of Stanford University from 1983. He was awarded the Honorary Doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology EPFL Lausanne in 1985; he presented the 23rd Ludwig-Prandtl-Lecture in Berlin in 1980 and held the third W.R. Sears Distinguished Lecture in Ithaca in 1987.

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Rott contributed to aerodynamics and to fluid dynamics with a distinguished career both in Switzerland and in the United States. He was an expert in thermoacoustics which he developed during his years in Zurich, with applications in refrigeration and ventilation, especially in space capsules, where thermo-oscillation is used to replace the natural convection occurring in gravity environments. In the 1940s, Rott contributed with Ackeret to airplanes in supersonic flight by investigating wing geometries and winglets. In the 1950s, he turned his attention more to basic fluid mechanics such as to the laminar boundary layer, the transfer of heat and mass in it and vorticity effects. In the 1950s, Rott took interest in rocketry as previously mentioned. He was the Honorary Editor of the Journal Zeitschrift für angewandte Mathematik und Physik ZAMP.

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_{Anonymous (1974). Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Rott. ETH Bulletin 8(98): 21. P}

_{Rott, N. (1945). Das Feld einer raschbewegten Schallquelle. Institut für Aerodynamik Mitteilung 9. Leemann: Zürich.}

_{Rott, N., Crabtree, L.F. (1952). Simplified laminar boundary-layer calculations for bodies of revolution and for yawed wings. Journal Aeronautical Sciences 19(8): 553-565.}

_{Rott, N. (1955). Steady viscous flow in the vicinity of a stagnation point. Quarterly Journal of Applied Mathematics 13: 444-451.}

_{Rott, N., Smith, W.E. (1956). Some examples of laminar boundary-layer flow on rotating blades. Journal Aeronautical Sciences 23(11): 991-996.}

_{Rott, N. (1980). Thermoacoustics. Advances in applied mechanics 20: 135-176. Academic Press: New York.}