Dryden, Hugh Latimer (1898-1965)

US

An aerodynamicist and career civil servant who played a prominent role in American aerospace developments after World War II. Dryden graduated from high school at the remarkably young age of 14 and earned an A.B. from Johns Hopkins University at age 17. Three years later, he was awarded a Ph.D. in physics and mathematics from the same institution even though he had been employed full-time in the National Bureau of Standards since June 1918. His career at the Bureau, which lasted until 1947, was devoted to studying airflow, turbulence, and particularly the problems of the boundary layer. The work that he carried out in the 1920s, on measuring turbulence in wind tunnels, facilitated research by NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) that led to the laminar flow wings used in the P-51 Mustang and other World War II aircraft. From the mid-1920s to 1947, Dryden’s publications became essential reading for aerodynamicists around the world. During World War II, his work on a glide bomb named the Bat won him a Presidential Certificate of Merit. He capped his career at the Bureau by becoming assistant director and then associate director during his final two years there. He then served as director of NACA (1947-58), and later became deputy administrator of NASA under T. Keith Glennan and James Webb.


Helped establish NASA and served as its Deputy Administrator.
  • Hugh Latimer Dryden was born in Pocomoke City, Maryland on July 2, 1898. His father lost the family farm during the financial "Panic of 1907" and moved to Baltimore to be a streetcar conductor. In 1913, at the age of 14, Hugh Dryden received a high school diploma from Baltimore City College, its youngest-ever graduate. He enrolled in Johns Hopkins University on a scholarship and completed a four-year Bachelor of Arts course in three years, graduating with honors in 1916. He received a Master's Degree in Physics from Johns Hopkins in 1918. His thesis was "Airplanes: An Introduction to the Physical Principles Embodied in Their Use."
  • In June 1918, Hugh Dryden began working at the National Bureau of Standards as an inspector of gauges while also enrolled in the Department of Physics at Johns Hopkins University. He received a Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics in the spring of 1919, the youngest student ever to have received a doctoral degree from John Hopkins.
  • In 1920, Dr. Dryden was promoted to head the Bureau's Aerodynamics Section. In 1924, he helped make some of the earliest studies of airfoil characteristics near the speed of sound at a time when airplane engines could not exceed 300 miles per hour. He was promoted to Chief of the Mechanics and Sound Division of the Bureau in 1934, and in January 1946, became its Assistant Director. Six months later he was named Associate Director.
  • In World War II, Dr. Dryden served on several technical groups advising the Armed Forces on aeronautical matters and guided missiles. As head of the Washington project of the National Defense Research Committee he led development of America's first guided missile successfully used in combat, the radar-homing "Bat." This achievement won him the Presidential Certificate of Merit in 1948. He had been a member of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) since 1931 and served on several wartime committees advising the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NACA, the Army Ordnance Department and the Army Air Forces, on guided missiles. Following the end of war he continued his interest in the Bureau's guided missile development program.
  • In 1945, Dr. Dryden was named Deputy Scientific Director of the Army Air Forces' Scientific Advisory Group appointed by General "Hap" Arnold to prepare a report as a guide for future research and development programs. With this group Dryden traveled to Germany, France, England, and Switzerland studying foreign scientific efforts in the development of aeronautics and aerial weapons, especially guided missiles. In 1946 the Army awarded him the Nation's second highest civilian decoration, the Medal of Freedom, for "an outstanding contribution to the fund of knowledge of the Army Air Forces with his research and analysis of the development and use of guided missiles by the enemy."
  • In 1947, Dryden resigned from the Bureau of Standards to become Director of Aeronautical Research at NACA. In 1949, he was promoted to Director of NACA. In this capacity he had charge of an expanding research organization with some 6,000 employees, three large laboratory centers, and two smaller research stations.
  • He died from cancer on December 2, 1965.
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