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7/15/2020 A Tribute: Satish Dhawan (1920-2002) – A Quarterly Publication of ACCS
Dhawan was formed when I met Professor Liepmann in his o ce at Caltech in early 1980. I curiously asked
him how he chose students from India. His response was remarkably simple. He said he knew very little
about the Indian education system and therefore had no particular method. But if “Satish makes a
recommendation” we don’t ask questions; we simply accept the person! It was therefore a great pleasure
for me to learn that Dhawan was posthumously admitted to GALCIT’s Hall of Fame in 2018. I was also very
disappointed the day I met Liepmann in not being able to meet Professor Richard Feynman who was
indisposed that day on account of his cancer. I consider Feynman as my only teacher from whom I learnt
physics from his enduring “Lectures on Physics, Vols. I-III”. I wanted to tell him how grateful I was.

I have always wondered If Feynman’s Lectures and Liepmann & Roshko’s book on Gas Dynamics could
teach me so much in absentia, how much more I would have learnt if I had been in Caltech. It was quite
obvious to me that Dhawan did bene t enormously from the environment and culture at Caltech which
was further burnished by his MA in English literature. Of the many Indian Caltech alumni I have met and
know, none has impressed me as Dhawan has. The di erence I believe was his MA in English literature. It
made him a person one felt delighted to know and listen.

Hans Liepmann passed away on 24 June 2009. He was the Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics,
1945–1985, Emeritus and the third director at the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories of the California
Institute of Technology (GALCIT, 1972-1985).[14] Anatol Roshko later became the Theodore von Kármán
Professor of Aeronautics at GALCIT (1955–1994), a position Liepmann once occupied. Roshko passed away
on 23 January 2017. He was 93.

Professor Rajendra Bera is the author of a forthcoming book, The Amazing World of Quantum Computing to be
published by Springer Nature. He is also the sole inventor on 28 US patents, all assigned to IBM.

References

Abdul Kalam (2003). Abdul Kalam, A. P. J. Satish Dhawan– A creative teacher”, Resonance. October 2003, pp 56-
62. https://www.ias.ac.in/describe/article/reso/008/10/0056-0062

Dhawan (1949). Dhawan, S. On the design and use of a exible nozzle for the Galcit transonic tunnel. Engineer’s
Thesis, California Institute of Technology. June 1949. https://thesis.library.caltech.edu/1422/ and
https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechETD:etd-04202004-110634

Dhawan (1951). Dhawan, S. Direct measurements of skin friction. Dissertation (Ph.D.), California Institute of
Technology. 1951. https://thesis.library.caltech.edu/3779/1/Dhawan_s_1951.pdf
Dhawan, S. Direct measurements of skin friction”, Technical Report 1121, National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics, Washington DC. 1953. Available at
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19930092157.pdf (It is essentially Dhawan’s PhD thesis).

Kasturirangan (2003). Kasturirangan, K. About Prof. Satish Dhawan. Resonance, October 2003, pp. 48-55.
https://www.ias.ac.in/public/Volumes/reso/008/10/0048-0055.pdf

Liepmann (2002). Liepmann, H. Satish Dhawan 1920-2002. Remembering Satish Dhawan. Engineering & Science,
No. 4, pp. 41-43. http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/4072/1/Obituaries.pdf
Liepmann, Roshko, and Dhawan (1952). Liepmann, H. W., Roshko, A., and Dhawan, S. On re ection of shock
waves from boundary layers. NACA-TR-1100, 1952.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19930090967.pdf
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