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ALLEN
E. PUCKETT:
PhD
'49, Aeronautics
by Jill Andrews
Spring
2002
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Use
your imagination! And don't be afraid of taking risks.
How
does an unknown, bright young Caltech scholar, during the pre-World
War II era, become a leader in the exploding new world of supersonic
aerodynamics, airfoil theory, and guided missiles? How does that
same expert in fluid mechanics easily switch fields to become
an international leader and corporate visionary during the rapid
evolution of electronics and global satellite communications?
And, after reflecting on a long and successful career, what message
does he wish to send to his fellow alumni? For answers, I visited
Caltech Distinguished Alumni awardee Allen E. Puckett at his Los
Angeles home.
For
more than 60 years, Allen Puckett has been at the left, right,
and center of a number of important research advances. As an industry
captain with strong connections to government and academic research,
he played various key roles in the development of supersonic flight,
guided missiles, manned space flight, and communication satellites.
After launching his career with his seminal thesis, Supersonic
Wave Drag of Thin Airfoils, an important examination
in radical aerodynamics, he went on to collect numerous awards,
including the National Medal of Technology for the construction
of the first synchronous satellite and the first commercial communications
satellite.
INTRODUCTION
TO CALTECH -- AND THE WAR
Puckett's scientific, engineering, and technological adventures
were set in motion during his years at the Guggenheim Aeronautical
Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT).
He had arrived at Caltech from Harvard in 1941, invited by Theodore
von Kármán, who became his mentor and a source of
inspiration:
Theodore
von Kármán gave me the strongest feelings of curiosity,
the urge to explore and discover. He taught the value of the pleasure
of exploring new ideas. He was a remarkable man--a wonderful human
being. Just to know him was a privilege. He had a way of inspiring
and stimulating us to keep probing, working to discover whatever
it was we were looking for.
Puckett
had barely set foot on campus when the United States entered World
War II. The unique combination of the place as it was then, with
the people Puckett met there, was at once tumultuous and thrilling--and
always filled with discovery. Progress on his PhD was delayed
by world events. However, the experience he gained as a consultant
to the U.S. Government (1945-1949) added weight to the importance
of finding ways to apply research to real-world challenges. Every
day he and his fellow scholars learned something new and dedicated
themselves to imagining new applications for their research.
THE
FLUID MECHANICS YEARS
When
I arrived here there were plans to build a 3-inch square test section
supersonic wind tunnel. No one had ever built one in this country
and that was my project.
Puckett
had moved into a turbo-charged atmosphere, where his own imagination,
intelligence and perseverance were both appreciated and strengthened.
He first worked on an Army Ordnance Corps-funded project to test
various types of artillery shells and projectiles for supersonic
flight. Even though artillery projectiles exceeded the sound barrier,
conventional wisdom of the day cautioned that airplanes would
never fly faster than the speed of sound. But with the appearance
of the German V1s and V2s, the U.S. Government's interest increased
dramatically in wings, stabilizers, and bodies that might resemble
missiles or aircraft at supersonic speeds.
Von
Kármán, who had heard about a new German wing design
that might possibly overcome the sound barrier, challenged Puckett
to calculate the new concept: a "swept" leading edge
that might delay the effects of shock waves over the wing, thus
"fooling" the wing into "thinking" it was
going slower than it actually was. The idea sounded possible to
von Kármán. He trusted Puckett's ingenuity, mathematical
expertise and, of course, his imagination, to produce a plausible
calculation in support of the theory. In less than two years,
Puckett produced the calculations that supported the concept.
His paper got a lot of attention, and it became the basis for
his PhD thesis.
While
playing with various calculations, Puckett realized that the equations
were "pretty messy," so to illustrate the basic principles
involved, he chose a simple shape: the triangle. It was several
years later and long after he left Caltech that the delta wing,
as he coined it, would be incorporated into aircraft such as the
Convair F-102 "Delta Dagger."
I
used a triangle because the geometry was simpler--the equations
were easier to handle, and it made it easy to develop some principles
or concepts about the effect of sweeping back the leading edge--the
triangle could be long and skinny, or blunt--and then you had to
choose where the maximum thickness would be--farther forward, or
aft. Later in my paper and in my thesis I called it a "delta
wing." This was the first serious attempt at a delta wing.
FROM
SUPERSONICS TO ELECTRONICS
In the days of pre-supersonic flight, GALCIT faculty and students
certainly had the right stuff. Anything they published was new,
a first. Yet in the years following the War, soon after he joined
Hughes, another "revolution" occurred--this time in
the electronics field, which promised far-reaching effects on
data processing, data storage, and communications. These three
areas of electronics application changed the way the world communicated
with itself. Puckett again was in the right place at the right
time, and he moved easily from the world of theoretical fluid
mechanics to the promising new field of electronics.
It
was the mathematical underpinnings that allowed me to switch fields.
That is a very interesting part of my career--I was just plain lucky
to be around as the electronics field was beginning to explode.
It matched very well with all the things I had been doing, so how
could I not move into this new field? Everything we touched was
new and exciting--the field was wide open! If you were reasonably
bright and had some imagination--and worked a little bit--you could
be the first and a leader in the field.
The
introduction of satellite communication had an enormous impact
on the world, and researchers at Hughes were among the first to
set things in motion. They had proved it could be done by transmitting
the 1964 Olympic games from Tokyo to this country via satellite,
marking the first time anyone could see an event in real time
from the other side of the globe. Yet Puckett and his colleagues
did not stop there. Supporting the idea of man in space was next.
They took on a government contract to broadcast the first television
pictures of the surface of the Moon, a vital preparatory step
in the Apollo program, which put the first man on the Moon in
1969.
The
Surveyor Project was one of my most memorable and valuable accomplishments.
From a communications point of view, distance just disappeared.
FROM
ELECTRONICS BACK TO FLUID MECHANICS...SORT OF
During the next two decades, as Hughes' Executive Vice President,
then President, and finally Chairman and CEO, Puckett kept pace
with emerging technologies. With Hughes, he found ways to create
applications for the most sophisticated research results scientists
and engineers in academia could offer. No doubt his influence
gave rise to Hughes' mission of today: Breaking the Thought Barrier.
In
1987, he once again found himself in the right place at the right
time--exploring, full-time, the practical applications of fluid
mechanics in the form of sailing yachts. "Retirement"
is the grand adventure that allows him, between marinas and large
bodies of water, to spend more time with his wife, Marilyn, and
his children and grandchildren.
Although
his full-time commitment to industry shifted to Chairman Emeritus
status in 1987, Puckett's interest in technological advancement
has only accelerated since then. In this context, he is extending
his business acumen and visionary thinking through philanthropic
efforts for Caltech faculty and students. He and Marilyn, longtime
members of the Caltech Associates, have established the Allen
and Marilyn Puckett Professorship and most recently funded the
Puckett Laboratory for Computational Fluid Dynamics.
It
is interesting to note that the most dramatic real innovations in
technology have been the result of private enterprise--the original
and unconventional thinking of a small number of people in an environment
that encourages innovative thinking. In the academic world, philanthropic
contributions can be a vital factor in creating the right environment
for innovation. It is not possible to predict the results--that
is the essence of innovation--but we can guarantee that there is
enormous opportunity for dramatic new ideas. Jill Andrews works
on behalf of Caltech's educational outreach programs.
ENG
Jill
Andrews works on behalf of Caltech's educational outreach programs.
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