Gerhard Neumann

Gerhard Neumann ( born October 8, 1917 in Frankfurt ( Oder); † 2 November 1997) was a German mechanical engineer and inventor.

Gerhard Neumann was the son of Siegfried and Frieda Neumann and went from 1927 to a boys high school in Frankfurt ( Oder). After studying at the School of Engineering Mittweida 1936 to 1938 he left Germany and went to China in December 1939. There he was a member of a volunteer corps in 1941, emerged from the 1942 Flying Tigers. On 25 June 1946, he received U.S. citizenship and began a tenure at the Douglas Aircraft Company. In October 1946, he married his wife in Los Angeles Clarice. In January 1947, he took a job as an engineer at the CNRRA in Shanghai, before he took up a post in the United States at the General Electric Aircraft Gas Turbine Division in Lynn (Massachusetts ) in March 1948. The GE Aircraft Turbine Division was moved in 1950 after Evendale ( Ohio) and Neumann devoted himself from 1952 to the General Electric X39, a nuclear reactor -powered jet engine, which, however, never left the prototype stage.

Following this he was head of development of the General Electric J79 jet engine. When this engine is proving a great success, Neumann was placed under the entire business jet engines from General Electric. In 1958 he received the Collier Trophy. Three years later, in March 1961, he became director of the division Flight Propulsion and 1963, vice - president of General Electric. He retained the post until January 1, 1980. Neumann was the holder of 8 patents.

The compressor of the variable J79 formed together with the combustion chambers and the turbine stage, the so-called core engine "core", which was the base for all the generations of GE jet engine families. Even large turbofan engines such as the CF6 have clearly seen the adjustable compressor of the J79.

Neumann has received numerous awards for their life's work, the Goddard Gold Medal ( 1970), the Guggenheim Award (1979) and awarded the Otto -Lilienthal Medal in 1995.

In addition, he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1986. In 1987 he was awarded an honorary doctorate.

In the Bavarian Niederaltaich the local aviation museum was named in his honor Gerhard Neumann Museum. It shows the development of the German and European aircraft from 1960 to the present. Gerhard Neumann visited the museum with his wife Clarice on 21 January 1997.

The house is 5 Mittweida wears his honor the name Gerhard Neumann construction.

Gerhard Neumann died in 1997 from leukemia.

Work philosophy

As Neumann entered at GE in the development department, he wondered about - in his opinion - cumbersome, costly and time-consuming intermediate steps in the development of the compressor. Neumann is from this time the phrase " Do it right first time! " ( something like: "Do it right the first time right! " ) attributed. This uncompromising attitude to quality quickly made him the friend of Jack Welch, his future mentor at GE.