Walter Guido Vincenti (April 20, 1917 – October 11, 2019) was an American engineer who worked in the field of

aeronautics Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design process, design, and manufacturing of air flight-capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. While the term originally referred ...

, designing planes that could fly at

hypersonic speed In aerodynamics, a hypersonic speed is one that exceeds five times the speed of sound, often stated as starting at speeds of Mach 5 and above. The precise Mach number at which a craft can be said to be flying at hypersonic speed varies, since i ...

. He was elected as a member of several scientific societies, including the

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is a professional society for the field of aerospace engineering Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecra ...

and

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

. He won several prestigious awards, such as the

Leonardo da Vinci Medal The Leonardo da Vinci Medal is the highest award of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), and was first given in 1962. In general this award is granted annually to scholars who have contributed outstandingly to the history of technology ...

and the

Daniel Guggenheim Medal The Daniel Guggenheim Medal is an American engineering award, established by Daniel and Harry Guggenheim. The medal is considered to be one of the greatest honors that can be presented for a lifetime of work in aeronautics. Its first recipien ...

Early life and education

Walter Guido Vincenti was born on April 20, 1917, in Baltimore, Maryland, to parents Agnes and Guido Vincenti, emigrants from Italy. He was one of five children. His family later moved to

Pasadena Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial d ...

, California, which is where he grew up. His interest in airplanes began at age ten when, in 1927,

Charles Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, and author. On May 20–21, 1927, he made the first nonstop flight from New York (state), New York to Paris, a distance of . His aircra ...

made a historic nonstop flight from

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. He began constructing

model aircraft A model aircraft is a physical model of an existing or imagined aircraft, and is built typically for display, research, or amusement. Model aircraft are divided into two basic groups: flying and non-flying. Non-flying models are also termed s ...

afterwards. Like his two elder brothers, he attended

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

for his undergraduate degree. He then completed two years of graduate work at Stanford in their mechanical engineering track with an emphasis in

Career

Shortly before finishing his graduate degree, he accepted a job offer from Russell G. Robinson to work at the

Ames Laboratory Ames National Laboratory, formerly Ames Laboratory, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Ames, Iowa, and affiliated with Iowa State University. It is a top-level national laboratory for research on national sec ...

. During World War II, he and his colleagues were initially exempted from the draft due to their research on military-grade technology. The policy was changed partway through the war, and he was drafted into the Navy. His assignment at the Navy, however, was to stay at Ames Laboroatory and continue working on the development of a supersonic

swept-wing A swept wing is a wing angled either backward or occasionally forward from its root rather than perpendicular to the fuselage. Swept wings have been flown since the pioneer days of aviation. Wing sweep at high speeds was first investigated in Ge ...

design. He was made a

chief petty officer A chief petty officer (CPO) is a senior non-commissioned officer in many navies and coast guards, usually above petty officer. By country Australia "Chief Petty Officer" is the second highest non-commissioned rank in the Royal Australian Navy ...

. He used the prize money from the Rockefeller Public Service Award to take a year-long sabbatical from Ames Laboratory and travel to

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

. There, he studied the physics and chemistry of gases at high temperatures. When he returned to California in 1956, Stanford had decided to start a aeronautical engineering department within its

School of Engineering Engineering education is the activity of teaching knowledge and principles to the professional development, professional practice of engineering. It includes an initial education (Diploma in Engineering, Dip.Eng.)and Bachelor of Engineering, ( ...

; they offered Vincenti a professorship within the new department. The Soviet launch of

Sputnik 1 Sputnik 1 (, , ''Satellite 1''), sometimes referred to as simply Sputnik, was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program ...

the following year caused a massive influx of funding into the nascent department by the US government. Some of his accomplishments at Stanford include overseeing the construction of a hypersonic

wind tunnel A wind tunnel is "an apparatus for producing a controlled stream of air for conducting aerodynamic experiments". The experiment is conducted in the test section of the wind tunnel and a complete tunnel configuration includes air ducting to and f ...

in 1965 and authoring ''Introduction to Physical Gas Dynamics'' (1965) and '' What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History'' (1990). From 1970–1976 he was a co-editor of the ''

Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics ''Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research on fluid mechanics. It is published once a year by Annual Reviews and the editors are Parviz Moin and Howard Stone. As of 2023, ''Annual Review of Flui ...

''.

Awards and honors

In 1951 he was made a fellow of the

. He received a Rockefeller Public Service Award in 1956 for his work on

heat shield In engineering, a heat shield is a component designed to protect an object or a human operator from being burnt or overheated by dissipating, reflecting, and/or absorbing heat. The term is most often used in reference to exhaust heat management a ...

s for spacecraft re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. In recognition of his work teaching undergraduates, Stanford gave him the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award in 1983. He was elected to the

in 1987. The

Society for the History of Technology The Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) is the primary professional society for historians of technology. SHOT was founded in 1958 in the United States, and it has since become an international society with members "from some thirty-five ...

awarded him the

in 1998. In 2016 he was awarded the

for his career in the field of

. In 2019, he received the Stanford Engineering Heroes Award, which is the highest award given by the Stanford University School of Engineering.

Personal life and death

He married Joyce , a painter, in 1947. They had a son and daughter together. Vincenti died of

pneumonia Pneumonia is an Inflammation, inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as Pulmonary alveolus, alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of Cough#Classification, productive or dry cough, ches ...

Palo Alto Palo Alto ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a charter city in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. Th ...

, California on October 11, 2019. He was 102 years old.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vincenti, Walter G 1917 births 2019 deaths American people of Italian descent American aerospace engineers American men centenarians Stanford University School of Engineering alumni Engineers from Baltimore United States Navy personnel of World War II Stanford University School of Engineering faculty Annual Reviews (publisher) editors