Irene Sänger-Bredt

Irene Reinhild Agnes Elisabeth Sänger-Bredt (24 April 1911 – 20 October 1983) was a German engineer, mathematician and physicist. She is co-credited with the design of a proposed intercontinental spaceplane/bomber prior to and during World War II.

Life and career

Sänger-Bredt received her doctorate (in natural science) in 1936. Her thesis was entitled ‘X-rays from Rare Earths’. For her first job she was attracted by a tender with few details of the little-known Research Center for Aviation at Trauen, Germany. Bredt began her research work as an assistant of Eugen Sänger at this rocket research centre. Her field of activities became thermodynamic and gas kinetics problems related to liquid-propelled rockets. She became the head of the Physics Department there in 1941 and the following year became a First Assistant at the German Research Institute for Gliding Flight at Ainring. Her task was the maintenance and analysis of ramjet test flights.

In 1945, Bredt moved to Paris and worked there as a researcher in the same area as before but now for the Arsenal de l'Aéronautique, later known as SNECMA. At the same time she acted as consultant to MATRA in Paris Billancourt as well as the Institute of Technology in Madras, South India. In 1954, after her marriage to Eugen Sänger and the birth of their son, Sänger-Bredt returned to Germany. She became deputy scientific director of the Research Institute for the Physics of Jet Propulsion, which had been founded by Eugen Sänger in Stuttgart.