engineering

Jakob Ackeret

Jakob Ackeret is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Jakob Ackeret rather than just read about it. In short: Jakob Ackeret, FRAeS (17 March 1898 – 27 March 1981) was a Swiss aeronautical engineer. He is widely viewed as one of the foremost aeronautics experts of the 20th century.

Key takeaways

Jakob Ackeret belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Jakob Ackeret to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Jakob Ackeret from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Jakob Ackeret, FRAeS (17 March 1898 – 27 March 1981) was a Swiss aeronautical engineer. He is widely viewed as one of the foremost aeronautics experts of the 20th century.

Birth and education Jakob Ackeret was born in 1898 in Switzerland. He received his diploma degree in mechanical engineering from ETH Zurich in 1920 under the supervision of Aurel Stodola. From 1921 to 1927 he worked with Ludwig Prandtl at the "Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt" in Göttingen, witnessing a legendary period in the development of modern fluid dynamics. He received his PhD from ETH Zurich in 1927.

Academic career After completing his PhD, Ackeret worked at Escher Wyss AG in Zurich as chief engineer of hydraulics, where he applied, with great success, modern aerodynamics to the design of turbines. He became a professor of Aerodynamics at ETH Zurich in 1931, where Wernher von Braun was one of his students.

Research Ackeret was an expert on gas turbines and was known for his research on propellers and on high-speed propulsion problems. When he was at ETH Zurich, he actively participated in the solution of practical engineering problems, such as the design of variable-pitch propellers for ships and airplanes. His most important invention was the gas turbine with a closed circuit. He made the invention together with C. Keller. Ackeret also contributed significantly to research in supersonic aerodynamics. He led the initial work on calculating the lift and drag on a supersonic airfoil and he proposed the designation of the "Mach number" for multiples of the speed of sound. On the 5th Volta Conference in Rome in 1935 Ackeret was planning to talk about supersonic lift, but because of "sensitive developments" for the Luftwaffe Adolf Busemann arranged their topics to be swapped (his paper about swept wings, which seemed an academic curiosity back then, later became seminal) and presented a design for a supersonic wind tunnel. Ackeret was awarded the Ludwig-Prandtl-Ring from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Luft- und Raumfahrt (German Society for Aeronautics and Astronautics) for "outstanding contribution in the field of aerospace engineering" in 1965. In 1976, he was elected foreign associate member of the American National Academy of Engineering for his "contributions to the understanding of high-speed and supersonic fluid mechanics, leading to significant improvements to the science of flight".

References

External links Jakob Ackeret Jakob Ackeret and the "Institut für Aerodynamik (IfA)" Jakob Ackeret at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Jakob Ackeret

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Jakob Ackeret claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Jakob Ackeret before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Jakob Ackeret ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Jakob Ackeret

In research: Jakob Ackeret appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Jakob Ackeret in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Jakob Ackeret is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1898 births, 1981 deaths, Academic staff of ETH Zurich, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Jakob Ackeret outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Jakob Ackeret in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Jakob Ackeret means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Jakob Ackeret out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Jakob Ackeret in simple terms?

Jakob Ackeret, FRAeS (17 March 1898 – 27 March 1981) was a Swiss aeronautical engineer. He is widely viewed as one of the foremost aeronautics experts of the 20th century.

Why does Jakob Ackeret matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Jakob Ackeret?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Jakob Ackeret.