Paco Axel Lagerstrom (February 24, 1914 – February 16, 1989) was a Swedish-American applied mathematician and aeronautical engineer. He was trained formally in mathematics, but worked for much of his career in aeronautical applications. He was known for work in applying the method of

asymptotic expansion In mathematics, an asymptotic expansion, asymptotic series or Poincaré expansion (after Henri Poincaré) is a formal series of functions which has the property that truncating the series after a finite number of terms provides an approximation ...

to fluid mechanics problems.Narasimha, R. (2004
''Divide, conquer and unify''
,

Nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

432(7019), 807. Several of his works have become classics, including "Matched Asymptotic Expansions: Ideas And Techniques".Lagerstrom, P. A. (1988) Matched Asymptotic Expansions: Ideas And Techniques, Springer.

Biography

He was born on February 24, 1914, in

Oskarshamn Oskarshamn is a coastal city and the seat of Oskarshamn Municipality, Kalmar County, Sweden with 17,258 inhabitants in 2010. History Etymology Döderhultsvik was the original name before a town charter was granted in 1856. The name was then chan ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. Lagerstrom earned bachelor's and master's degrees, in 1935 and 1939 respectively, at the

Stockholm University Stockholm University (SU) () is a public university, public research university in Stockholm, Sweden, founded as a college in 1878, with university status since 1960. With over 33,000 students at four different faculties: law, humanities, social ...

. He then came to America as a graduate student at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

, earning a PhD in 1942 in mathematics under

Salomon Bochner Salomon Bochner (20 August 1899 – 2 May 1982) was a Galizien-born mathematician, known for work in mathematical analysis, probability theory and differential geometry. Life He was born into a Jewish family in Podgórze (near Kraków), th ...

with a dissertation entitled "Measure and Integral in Partially Ordered Spaces". During this time, Lagerstrom was also a mathematics instructor. He left Princeton in 1944 to work briefly at

Bell Aircraft The Bell Aircraft Corporation was an American aircraft manufacturer, a builder of several types of fighter aircraft for World War II but most famous for the Bell X-1, the first supersonic aircraft, and for the development and production of many i ...

in Niagara Falls, New York until 1945, after which he worked for a similarly brief period at

Douglas Aircraft The Douglas Aircraft Company was an American aerospace and defense company based in Southern California. Founded in 1921 by Donald Wills Douglas Sr., it merged with McDonnell Aircraft in 1967 to form McDonnell Douglas, where it operated as a di ...

in Santa Monica.''GALCIT: The First 75 Years''
. While he had already published significant results in pure mathematics,McMillan, B. and Lagerstrom, P. (1945

Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society The ''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society'' is a quarterly mathematical journal published by the American Mathematical Society. Scope It publishes surveys on contemporary research topics, written at a level accessible to non-experts. ...

51, 251-258.Lagerstrom, P. (1945
''A proof of a theorem on commutative matrices''
,

51, 535-536. he was, by this time, firmly interested in its applications to fluid dynamic and aerodynamic problems. In 1946, Lagerstrom was recruited by

Hans Liepmann Hans Wolfgang Liepmann (July 3, 1914 – June 24, 2009) was an American fluid dynamicist, aerospace scientist and emeritus Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology. He is known for his numerou ...

to the

Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory The Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT), was a research institute created in 1926, at first specializing in aeronautics research. In 1930, Hungarian scientist Theodore von Kármán accepted the di ...

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

. He was later promoted to Professor of Aeronautics in 1952 and Professor of Applied Mathematics in 1967, having departed only briefly to the

University of Paris The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...

in 1960–1961 as visiting professor on a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

. He died on February 16, 1989.http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/609/2/Obituaries.pdf

Publications

His book "Laminar flow theory", initially published in 1964 in the Theory of Laminar flows, edited by F.K.Moore, is still considered as the standard textbook for fluid mechanics. * * * *

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lagerstrom, Paco 20th-century American mathematicians Fluid dynamicists 20th-century Swedish mathematicians 20th-century American engineers 1989 deaths 1914 births Swedish emigrants to the United States People from Oskarshamn Municipality