Interview with Anthony Leonard

Abstract

An interview in four sessions, November 2012, with Anthony Leonard, Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics, emeritus, in the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories, Division of Engineering and Applied Science. Dr. Leonard grew up in the Midwest and later moved to Ventura, California, with his family. He discusses his undergraduate years at Caltech, where he was active in athletics and majored in mechanical engineering, graduating in 1959. As a graduate student at Stanford (PhD 1963), he specialized in nuclear engineering, working with Joel Ferziger. In 1966, after three years at the RAND Corporation working on propulsion systems and fusion power, he returned to Stanford to teach nuclear engineering. He moved to NASA’s Ames Research Center in 1973, working on computational fluid dynamics. In 1985, he joined Caltech’s GALCIT as a professor of aeronautics, after a year there as a visiting professor. He became von Kármán Professor in 2000 and Professor emeritus in 2005. In this interview, in addition to discussing his research, particularly on turbulence and vortices, and offering recollections of his GALCIT colleagues and students, he recalls his work on the Freshman Admissions Committee, the Administrative Committee on Supercomputers, the Academic Policies Committee, the Caltech Alumni Association, and the Caltech Y.