Johanna Weber facts for kids
Johanna Weber (born August 8, 1910 – died October 24, 2014) was a brilliant German-born British mathematician and expert in aerodynamics. She is famous for helping to design the Handley Page Victor bomber and the amazing Concorde airplane.
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Early Life and Education
Johanna Weber was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, on August 8, 1910. Her family had roots in Wallonia. Sadly, her father died during the First World War. Because she was a 'war orphan', she received money to help with her schooling. She attended a convent school.
In 1929, she started studying chemistry and mathematics at the University of Cologne. A year later, she moved to the University of Göttingen. She finished her degree with top honors in 1935. After that, she trained to be a teacher for two years. However, she was not allowed to teach because she did not join the Nazi party. Her mother and sister needed her financial help. So, Johanna looked for work in the armaments industry, which made weapons.
A Career in Aerodynamics
Weber first worked at Krupp in Essen. She was a researcher in ballistics, which is the study of how projectiles (like bullets) fly. Her job involved many long math problems. She used mechanical calculators called Brunsviga machines.
Starting Aerodynamics Research
In 1939, Weber joined the Aerodynamics Research Institute in Göttingen. This place was also known as the Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt Göttingen. She worked in a small team that focused on theory. Her first training was about how to correct measurements in wind tunnel tests. Here, she met Dietrich Küchemann, and they worked together for many years.
Scientists at the Institute had developed a way to understand how air flows around an aircraft. This was a good start, but it was not perfect. Johanna's job was to make it better. She realized her work was similar to Küchemann's research on jet engine air intakes. They decided to team up. Johanna did the math and wind tunnel tests. Küchemann guided their research based on what airplane makers needed. During the Second World War, they created a lot of important work together.
Moving to England
After the war, the British took control of Göttingen. The British government paid Weber and Küchemann to write down all their research. This work became their book, Aerodynamics of Propulsion. The British also invited German scientists to work in the UK. This was part of a plan called Operation Paperclip and Operation Surgeon. The goal was to get German scientific knowledge and help.
In October 1946, Küchemann joined the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) in Farnborough, England. He convinced Johanna to join him. They kept renewing their six-month contracts. For a while, they were still seen as 'enemy aliens'. But in 1953, they both became British citizens.
Johanna was the only woman among the German scientists. She stayed at an RAE staff hostel. She worked in the Low Speed Wind Tunnels division, led by Frances Bradfield. She started doing experiments on air intakes with John Seddon.
Designing New Aircraft
In 1946, the British Air Ministry wanted a new jet bomber. It needed to carry a nuclear weapon. The Handley Page Victor bomber was one of the most advanced designs. Küchemann knew a lot about German work on swept-wing aircraft. This included a special crescent-shaped wing. The Victor would have three parts to its crescent wing, each with a different angle. Johanna helped with the complex math. She also added improvements for the engine air intakes, based on her wartime work with Küchemann. Her simple math models were done by hand by a team of women 'computors'. In 1945, she and Küchemann wrote a paper about the aerodynamics of the new wing and body of the plane.
Later, Johanna and Küchemann worked on making subsonic aerodynamics even better. Subsonic means slower than the speed of sound. At first, they looked at wing thickness and lift separately. In the 1950s, Johanna found a way to look at all parts of a wing at once. This included its thickness, twist, sweepback, and curve. This helped predict how air pressure would act on the wing. The Vickers aircraft team then used this to figure out the best wing shape for a desired air pressure. This advanced wing shape was used on the Vickers VC10 airliner.
The Concorde Johanna also started researching supersonic transport. Supersonic means faster than the speed of sound. In 1955, she showed that a thin delta wing, angled steeply, could create enough lift for takeoff and landing. At the same time, it could fly very well at supersonic speeds. Küchemann then told the UK Government about this wing design. This led to support for a Mach 2 airliner. Mach 2 means twice the speed of sound. This support came from the Supersonic Transport Advisory Committee in 1956.
In 1961, a test plane called the Handley Page HP.115 was built. Its purpose was to test how well the slender delta wing worked at slow speeds.
Johanna made two big contributions to the supersonic effort. First, she created tools to predict the drag on a slender delta-winged aircraft during supersonic flight. Second, she helped shape the wing so that air swirls, called vortices, would form at its front edge. This was better than having them form above or below the wing. Her work from 1959 onwards was very important for the design and building of the Concorde.
The Airbus After working on the Concorde, Johanna went back to subsonic research. She studied how methods for slower airflows could still work at very high speeds. She improved existing theories. These theories were based on airflows that don't change much in density. Her improvements helped computers calculate exact solutions, not just close guesses. One main problem in airplane design was where the wing joined the body. She was able to create a model for its entire three-dimensional shape. These methods, along with others from the VC10, were used to design the Airbus A300B. This was the world's first wide-body twinjet airplane.
Later Life and Passing
Johanna Weber retired in 1975. She was a Senior Principal Scientific Officer. Even after retiring, she continued to work as a consultant for the RAE. She had written nearly 100 scientific papers. In 1976, after Küchemann passed away, Johanna helped publish his book, The Aerodynamic Design of Aircraft, which came out in 1978. After that, she said she was finished with aerodynamics.
Johanna never married. She lived in the RAE hostel until 1953. Then she moved into a small apartment next to Küchemann's house. She lived there until 1961. After that, she bought the house next door to the Küchemanns. It was hard for her to get a mortgage (a loan for a house). Banks often did not lend money to single women back then.
After retiring, Johanna found new interests. She took classes in psychology and geology at the University of Surrey.
Johanna's younger sister, whom she was very close to, had poor health for most of her life. Johanna supported her sister and mother financially, sending money to Germany. She had wanted to return to them. Her sister died at age 50.
Johanna lived in her house until 2010. She passed away in a nursing home in Farnham, Surrey, on October 24, 2014.
