KANTROWITZ, ARTHUR

KANTROWITZ, ARTHUR (1913– ), U.S. physicist and aerodynamicist. Kantrowitz, who was born in New York, worked with the National Advisory Council on Aeronautics from 1935–46, and for the next ten years was professor of aeronautical engineering and engineering physics at Cornell University. From 1956 he was director of the Avco-Everett Research and Laboratories and of Avco Corporation. His numerous scientific papers have been concerned with supersonic axial flow compressors, the effect of molecular vibrations on gas dynamics, magnetohydrodynamic generators, shock tube studies, shock waves in the interplanetary plasma, and the re-entry of space vehicles into the earth's atmosphere. He invented the high-intensity molecular beam which has been instrumental in several Nobel Prize-winning research projects. Kantrowitz also worked in medical engineering in the development of cardiac-assist devices. (Samuel Aaron Miller)