TROOST

NETHERLANDS (see also List of Individuals)

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19.3.1895 Rotterdam/NL - 18.3.1966 Leiden/NL

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Laurens Troost graduated as a naval engineer from the Technical University of Delft in 1919. He then entered the Royal Dutch Marine and there joined the staff of the naval direction, from where he left ten years later as its secretary. In 1929, he was appointed director of the newly erected Dutch Naval Laboratory in Wageningen. Troost organized in 1933 the International Towing Tank Conference at his laboratory and thus demonstrated to his international colleagues the advances made in the Netherlands in this sector of hydraulic engineering and in parallel supported international collaboration for improved naval design. In 1940, the Laboratory was practically destroyed by the German attacks to his country, such that he returned there only by 1944 and re-inaugurated a larger institute in 1946. In the same year, Troost was appointed professor of naval engineering at the Delft Technical University and from there moved to the United States in 1952, where he joined the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT in Cambridge MA. Troost retired from that position in 1960 and returned to the Netherlands. He was awarded in 1952 the Vice Admiral E.L. Cochrane Award, a decoration presented to the author of the best technical paper published in the journal Marine Technology.

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Troost published several papers in the Dutch journal Schip and Werf, a media founded in 1934 that specialized in questions of naval engineering. Based on the long career at his Naval tank in Wageningen, Troost's lectures were described as both close to practice and founded on theoretical bases. His lecture Naval Hydrodynamics was never published in book form, however. In parallel, Troost headed the Nijverheidsorganisatie TNO, the International Association for Protection of Industrial Propriety in Delft. He was awarded Officer of the Order van Oranje Nassau for his merits in naval engineering in 1937; he was decorated with the De Ruyter Medal in 1949 and was knighted Cavalier of the Order of the Dutch Lion by the Dutch Queen in 1965.

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_{Lammeren, W.P.A. van, Troost, L., Koning, J.G. (1948). Resistance, propulsion and steering of ships: A manual for designing hull forms, propellors and rudders. Stam: Haarlem.}

_{Lammeren, W.P.A. van (1966). Prof. ir. L. Troost. De Ingenieur 78(15): A211-A212. P}

_{Troost, L., Lammeren, W.P.A. van (1942). Weerstand en voortstuwing van schepen, handleiding bij het ontwerpen van scheepsvormen, schroeven en roeren. Stam: Amsterdam.}

_{Troost, L. (1946). Proefschepen, modelproeven en coordinatie. Veenman: Wageningen. http://www.inghist.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/BWN/lemmata/bwn3/troost}