Eastman Jacobs

Eastman Jacobs (1902–1987) was a leading aerodynamicist who worked for NACA's Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory (renamed NASA Langley Research Center in 1958) from the 1920s to the 1940s. He was responsible for advancing many fields in aerodynamics, dealing particularly with wind tunnels, airfoils, turbulence, boundary layers, and Schlieren photography.

Biography

Eastman Jacobs joined NACA in 1925 after earning a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He applied at the Bell Labs but was not accepted and opted for his second choice Langley. His knowledge of complex analysis was key to current airfoil design techniques at the time. He quickly became one of the leading scientists at the Langley Research Center due to his work with optimizing airfoils using a variable density wind tunnel that could operate with high Reynolds numbers. He was also officially the head of the Variable Density Wind Tunnel Division from 1928-1939. He and his colleagues were able to significantly reduce the turbulence in the wind tunnel, which led to a better understanding of boundary development around airfoil sections. A better knowledge of boundary layer growth then led to an optimization scheme for low-drag laminar flow airfoils. This optimization scheme produced the NACA 4-digit airfoils that led to faster aircraft like the P-51 Mustang in World War II. In 1937, he received the Sylvanus Albert Reed Award for his improvement of airfoils.