Stanford University Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics Aerospace Computing Laboratory

ANTONY JAMESON

 

ANTONY JAMESON has authored or co-authored over 400 scientific papers in a wide range of subject areas, including both control theory and aerodynamics, and is the principal developer of the well-known series of `FLO' and `SYN' codes, which have been used throughout the aerospace industry. The son of Brigadier Oscar Jameson and Olive Turney, he was born in Gillingham, Kent in 1934. Much of his early childhood was spent in India where his father was stationed as a British Army Officer. He first attended school at St. Edwards, Simla. Subsequently he was educated at Mowden School and Winchester College. He served as a Lieutenant in the British Army in 1953-1955, and was sent to Malaya. On coming out of the army he worked in the compressor design section of Bristol Aero-Engines in the summer of 1955, before studying engineering at Trinity Hall, Cambridge University, graduating with first class honors in 1958. Subsequently he stayed on at Cambridge to obtain a Ph.D. in Magnetohydrodynamics, and he was a Research Fellow of Trinity Hall from 1960-1963.

On leaving Cambridge he worked as an economist for the Trades Union Congress in 1964-1965. He then became Chief Mathematician at Hawker Siddeley Dynamics in Coventry. In 1966 he joined the Aerodynamics Section of the Grumman Aerospace Corporation in Bethpage, New York. In this period his work was largely directed toward the application of automatic control theory to stability augmentation systems. Starting in 1970, he began to concentrate on the problem of predicting transonic flow. Existing numerical methods were not equal to the task, and it was clear that new methods would have to be developed. At that time limitations in computer capabilities also precluded any attempt to calculate the flow past a complete aircraft, but useful efforts could be made for simpler configurations such as aerofoils and wings.

In 1972 he moved to the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, where he continued his work on transonic flow. In 1974 he was appointed Professor of Computer Science at New York University. He joined Princeton University in 1980, and in 1982 he was appointed James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Aerospace Engineering. He was Director of the University's Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics from 1986 to 1988. During the last decade Professor Jameson devised a variety of new schemes for solving the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations for inviscid and viscous compressible flows, and wrote a series of computer programs which have been widely used in the aircraft industry. He and his co-workers were finally able to realize their goal of calculating the flow past a complete aircraft in 1985, using his new finite element method. Subsequently, he re-focused his research on the problem of shape optimization for aerodynamic design.

In 1980 he received the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in recognition of his earlier work on transonic potential flow. In 1986 he was appointed an honorary professor of North Western Polytechnic University in Xian, China. In 1988 he received the Gold Medal of the British Royal Aeronautical Society for his outstanding contribution to the development of methods for the calculation of transonic flow over real aircraft configurations. In 1991 he was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and he was also elected an Honorary Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and in 1992 was a W.R.Sears Distinguished Lecturer at Cornell University. In 1993, he was selected to receive the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Fluid Dynamics Award "in recognition of numerous contributions to computational fluid dynamics and the development of many widely used computer programs which have immeasurably improved the capability to analyze and understand complex flows."

Antony Jameson was elected a fellow of the British Royal Society for Improving Natural Knowledge in 1995, and that same year was selected by ASME to receive The Spirit of St. Louis Medal "for numerous outstanding contributions to computational fluid dynamics and for the development of many widely used computer programs that have immeasurably improved understanding of complex flow fields and have become dominant tools for aerodynamic design." In 1996 he was selected to receive the Theodorsen Lectureship Award from ICASE/NASA, Langley. In 1997 he was elected as a foreign associate to the National Academy of Engineering. He was awarded the degree Docteur Honoris Causa from the Univertiy of Paris in 2001, and in 2002 he received the degree Docteur Honoris Causa from Uppsala University. Both these degrees were in Applied Mathematics. In 2004 he became a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. In 2005 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and also received the US Association of Computational Mechanics Fluids Dynamics award. A special symposium in his honor was held in 2006 at the World Congress of Computational Mechanics in Los Angeles.

In 2006 he was also selected jointly by six engineering societies, the ASME, the IEEE, the SAE, the SNAME, the AIAA and the ASCE to receive the Elmer A. Sperry Award for Advancing the Art of Transportation, in recognition of his seminal and continuing contributions to the modern design of aircraft through his numerous algorithmic innovations and through the development of the FLO, SYN, and AIRPLANE series of computational fluid dynamics codes.

In 2015 he has received the AIAA Pendray Aerospace Literature Award, the USACM John Von Neumann Medal for "pioneering contributions to potential fluid dynamics," and the AIAA / ASME / AHS / SAE Guggenheim Medal "for exceptional contributions to the algorithmic innovation and the development of computational fluid dynamics codes that have made important contributions to aircraft design." He has also received jointly with Dr. Bob Mills the Royal Aeronautical Society's Silver Team Award for the aerodynamic design of the Gulfstream G650 that has set new standards for a high speed and long range business jet.