Nikolai Zhukovsky

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Nikolai Yegorovich Zhukovsky (Russian: Николай Егорович Жуковский) (January 17 [O.S. January 5] 1847 – March 17, 1921) was a Russian scientist, founding father of modern aero- and hydrodynamics. Whereas contemporary scientists scoffed at the idea of human flight, Zhukovsky was the first to undertake the study of airflow.

His name usually romanised as Joukovsky or Joukowsky in the literature. See for example Joukowsky transform, also Kutta-Schukowski, Kutta-Joukowski and so on.

Zhukovsky was born in the village Orekhovo, Vladimir Oblast. He graduated from Moscow University in 1868. Since 1872 he was a professor at Imperial Technical School. He established the world's first Aerodynamic Institute in 1904 in Kachino near Moscow. From 1918 he was the head of TsAGI (Central AeroHydroDynamics Institute).

He was the first engineer scientist to explain mathematically the origin of aerodynamic lift, through his circulation hypothesis, the first to dimension the lift force generated by a body moving through an ideal fluid as proportional to the velocity and the circulation around the body, and through a mathematical conformal transformation the first to define the shape of the aerodynamic profile having as essential elements a rounded nose (leading edge), double surface (finite thickness), cambered or straight, and a sharp tail (trailing edge). He built the first wind tunnel in Russia.

He is also responsble for the eponymous water hammer equation used by civil engineers.

A city near Moscow and Zhukovskiy crater on the moon is named in his honor. He is not to be confused with Nikolai Ivanovich Zhukovsky.