Antony Jameson joins Orville Wright and other aerial pioneers by winning Guggenheim Medal

Antony Jameson, professor of aeronautics and astronautics, has won the Daniel Guggenheim Medal, which is considered one of the highest honors presented for a lifetime of achievement in aeronautics. Past recipients have worked in industry, government and academia, and have included Orville Wright, Charles Lindbergh, William Boeing and William Durand.

The Guggenheim Medal is given annually to people who make notable achievements in the advancement of aeronautics. It is sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Society of Automotive Engineers, the American Helicopter Society and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

The Guggenheim Medal is the third award that Jameson has won in what turns out to be an extraordinary year for the Stanford professor.

The other two awards are the Pendray Aerospace Literature Award and the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM) John von Neumann Medal.

The Pendray is awarded for outstanding additions to the scientific literature of aeronautics and astronautics.

The von Neumann Medal is presented once ever two years in recognition of outstanding and sustained contributions and eminent achievements in the field of computational or structural mechanics.

Underlying all three awards, including the most recent, the Guggenheim Medal, is work that Jameson began in 1970 when he played a seminal role in creating what was then the new discipline of computational fluid dynamics.

He also pioneered the concept of aerodynamic shape optimization by adapting the mathematical techniques of control theory to aircraft design. Jameson’s contributions allowed designers to choose the optimal wing shape to enable an aircraft to carry the biggest payload at the highest speed while consuming the least possible amount of fuel.

The Guggenheim Medal is Professor Antony Jameson's third award in an extraordinary year. (Photo: Joel Simon)

In receiving the Pendray award Jameson was cited for “seminal and high-impact research papers in the field of computational fluid dynamics and aerodynamic optimization.”

His von Neumann medal award noted his research on the numerical solution of partial differential equations with applications to subsonic, transonic and supersonic flow past complex configurations.

During his career Jameson has authored more than 400 papers describing numerous new algorithms. His software has been widely used by major aerospace companies, including Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier and Embraer. His ideas have been applied to the design of both military and commercial aircraft, most recently by Gulfstream in creating the G650, which recently won the 2014 Collier Trophy for technological advancements in aircraft performance.

Jameson earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge and has received numerous awards and honors, including NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Gold Medal, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Fluid Dynamics Award, ASME’s Spirit of St. Louis Medal, USACM’s Computational Fluid Mechanics Award and the Elmer Sperry Award from six engineering societies for advancing the art of transportation. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of London, the Royal Aeronautical Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering and a foreign member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.

Jameson’s extraordinary year continues a tradition of excellence and recognition by Stanford Engineering’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

He is the fourth Stanford faculty member to win the Pendray, preceded by Howard Seifert (1962), Arthur Bryson (1963) and Nicholas Hoff (1971).

He is the second von Neumann medal winner. Charbel Farhat, chair of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, won that medal in 2009.

Farhat noted that Jameson now becomes the fifth Guggenheim winner from Stanford’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

“This is also a great honor for our department, which, despite its small size, has the highest number of Guggenheim Medalists among any institution, whether in academia or in industry,” Farhat said. The Department’s first winner was William Durand (1935), followed by Nicholas J. Hoff (1983), Holt Ashley (2003) and Arthur Bryson (2009).