SUMMARY

The evolution of aerodynamics in the twentieth-century – was it engineering or science? In retrospect, this should now appear to be a rather naive question. The answer is both, and more. When the academic community embraced the idea of powered flight at the turn of the century, they found a plethora of questions about aerodynamics ripe for science to answer. Of course, airplanes were flying, and flying somewhat successfully, long before the answers came. It is this aspect that prompted the aviation historian Richard K. Smith to state: “The airplane did more for science than science ever did for the airplane.”12 Today, modem aerodynamics is dominated by the computer; the techniques of computational fluid dynamics allow us to solve complex aerodynamic flowfields heretofore dreamed impossible. And applications are being made to the whole spectrum of flight, from low-speed to hypersonic vehicles. However, it is clear that the way we have arrived at our current understanding of aerodynamics, and our ability to predict aerodynamic phenomena, is through an intellectual process that blended the disciplines of science, engineering science, and pure engineering. Perhaps, within the scope of the history of technology, aerodynamics is one of the best examples of such blending.