William Frederick Durand (March 5, 1859 – August 9, 1958) was a United States naval officer and pioneer mechanical engineer. He contributed significantly to the development of aircraft propellers. He was the first civilian chair of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the forerunner of NASA.

A native of Connecticut, he was a member of the first graduating class of Birmingham High School in Derby, Connecticut (now Derby High School) in 1877. He graduated second in his class at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis and received his Ph.D. from Lafayette College. He went on to teach at the Michigan State College, Cornell University and Stanford University, teaching that school's first course in aeronautics, the second offered by any school in the country (the first was offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). He helped rebuild Stanford after the 1906 earthquake, and the department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering building bears his name. A memorial there reads: "His first professional assignment in 1880 was on the , a full rigged wooden ship with auxiliary steam power. His last, 1942–46 was as chairman of the National Aeronautical Commission for the development of jet propulsion for aircraft." He died in 1958 at the age of 99.

Biography

Early life William Frederick Durand was born on March 5, 1859, in Beacon Falls, Connecticut. He was the fourth and youngest child and second son to William Leavenworth Durand and Ruth née Coe. When Durand was one year old his family moved to Derby, Connecticut. During high school Durand showed an aptitude in mathematics; he took extra curricular studies from the principal in analytic geometry and worked as a surveyor's assistant. Durand's brother strongly recommended that he take engineering at the United States Naval Academy. The Academy's entrance exams at the time tested for familiarization with machine tools, so Durand dropped attendance in the spring semester of high school in 1876 to work in the tool room of a factory in Ansonia, Connecticut. Durand was one of five to graduate in the first high school graduating class.

To further prepare for the Navy Academy entrance exams, Durand attended a summer course at the Maryland Agricultural College taught by a retired American Civil War naval veteran. Travelling to Maryland for the classes, Durand stopped at the Centennial Exposition where the Corliss steam engine made a lifelong impression.

Naval career In 1876, Durand was one of 80 applicants testing for 25 openings at the academy. His first examination was in elementary mechanics, presided over by A. A. Michelson. Durand placed tenth in the exams and was admitted into the academy. During summers Durand cruised on board .

At the time graduates of the U. S. Naval Academy did not receive commission upon graduation but were required to serve two years of sea duty before being eligible. Durand graduated in 1880 from the academy with the rank of cadet engineer and was assigned to , flagship of the North Atlantic Squadron. Also assigned to Tennessee was Durand's classmate Midshipman W. S. Sims. After two years at sea Durand was given a week-long oral exam by the Naval Examining Board. Durand passed the exam and was commissioned as Assistant Engineer.

Durand continued to serve on Tennessee until June 1883, when he was transferred to the Bureau of Steam Engineering. There Durand was assigned to work on the design of the engines for . While there an Act of Congress titled "To Promote a Knowledge of Steam Engineering and Iron Shipbuilding Act" provided officers of the Engineer Corps of the Navy as instructors to scientific and technical institutions in the United States. Durand requested a tour of duty at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. While there Durand married Charlotte Kneen on October 23, 1883, and had a son on June 14, 1885. Durand earned a Ph.D. in engineering from Lafayette while there.

In autumn 1885 Durand was transferred to the Morgan Iron Works as an inspector on the engines for and . In November 1885 Durand received a telegram ordering him to the Brooklyn Navy Yard to participate in sea trials of . The recently completed Dolphin had received an adverse report from the Board of Inspection and Survey. Among the findings was a claim of structural weakness. Captain R. W. Meade suggested to Secretary of Navy William C. Whitney that he take Dolphin to sea in search of a storm. Dolphin was outfitted at Newport, Rhode Island, and in late November the ship sailed for Cape Hatteras, where a storm of strong wind and heavy seas was known to be. The test plan consisted of: two hours of steaming under full power directly into the storm, two hours steaming with the wind 45 degrees off the bow, two hours with the wind amidships, two hours off the quarter, and two hours with the storm astern. Dolphin passed the storm test and sailed to the Norfolk Navy Yard.

Durand requested and received duty as a naval engineering instructor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, arriving in March 1887.

Honors Member of the American Philosophical Society (1917) Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences (1917) Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (1918) Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1921) LL.D. (Honorary) University of California (1924) LL.D. (Honorary) University of Utah (1927) Honorary Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1934) Daniel Guggenheim Medal (1935) Franklin Medal (1938) D.Eng. (Honorary) Worcester Polytechnic Institute (1938) John J. Carty Award of the National Academy of Sciences (1945) American Society of Mechanical Engineering Medal (1945) Presidential Medal for Merit (1946) Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy (1948) Durand Building at Stanford University Durand Road near Moffett Federal Airfield

Work Michigan State and Cornell While in Worcester Durand was approached by a member of the board of trustees of Michigan State College. Michigan State was looking for someone to create and head a mechanical engineering program. Durand accepted the position and resigned his commission with the US Navy effective 15 September 1887.

Durand worked at Michigan State in Lansing, Michigan, for four years, creating the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

In late Spring 1891 Durand accepted the chair of mechanical engineering at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana. Later in the summer Durand learned that Robert H. Thurston, Director of Sibley College at Cornell University, was looking for someone to lead a planned post-graduate school of the College in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. Thurston agreed to hire Durand, and the administrators at Purdue agreed to let him go if he could find a suitable replacement for Purdue. Professor John Joseph Flather of the University of Minnesota accepted the position at Purdue, and Durand went to Cornell. Shortly after arriving Durand became the secretary of the Sibley faculty.

In 1892, Durand was elected a member of Sigma Xi, an engineering honors fraternity that started at Cornell in 1886. Durand would later become National President of the Society in 1936.

Logarithm paper, radial planimeter, and marine propeller research Three accomplishments Durand thought noteworthy during his years at Cornell were the development of logarithmic paper, developing theoretically and mechanically an averaging radial planimeter, and research on marine propellers.

In 1893, Durand developed and introduced Logarithmic graph paper, where the logarithmic scale is marked off in distances proportional to the logarithms of the values being represented. Keuffel and Esser Company listed logarithmic paper in their general catalog as "Durand's Logarithmic Paper" as late as 1936.

In 1893, Durand published a paper mathematically describing a radial planimeter for averaging values plotted in polar coordinates. Originally a radial planimeter was of academic interest only, but ten years later clock driven recording instruments started being used. Durand created working device based on his theory. He patented the device and received royalties from a scientific instrument company making the devices until the patent expired.

Durand conducted research on the theory of operation of marine screw propellers while at Cornell. Using funding from the Carnegie Institute, a concrete canal was built in the Hydraulic Laboratory for the study of propellers. Approximately forty-nine twelve inch diameter model propellers with varying pitch and proportion were tested over the course of several years.

On October 25, 1903, Robert Thurston died and Durand became acting Director of Sibley College while Cornell searched for a permanent replacement. When A. W. Smith of Stanford University became Director David Starr Jordan, president of Stanford, offered Durand a position at Stanford to replace the vacancy created by the leaving of Smith. Durand accepted the offer and moved to Stanford in August 1904.

Stanford (1904–1917)

Durand was the director of the mechanical engineering department and acting director of the electrical engineering department. Durand recruited H. J. Ryan from Cornell to be director of electrical engineering, a position Ryan held from 1905 until his death in 1934.

At 5:20 AM on April 20, 1906, Durand was awakened by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. A marble statue of Louis Agassiz fell headfirst, piercing the concrete sidewalk. University president Jordan commented "Agassiz was always a hard-headed scientist." Durand was appointed to a Board of Engineers tasked with clearing the ruins and making temporary repairs allowing the university to reopen in the fall. Stanford reopened in September for fall semester, and reconstruction was not completed until 1908.

In 1912 Durand chaired the Committee of Management in preparation for the Engineering Congress held in conjunction with the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition. George Washington Goethals was Honorary President of the Congress. Afterwards Durand compiled and edited the papers read before the congress into 18 volumes, mailing them to subscribers.

The NACA

In 1914 Durand attended a conference convened by Charles Doolittle Walcott, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., for the purpose of stimulating interest in aeronautic science, and its relation to the U. S. government. The conference led to an act of congress organizing an Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (later the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) "to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to their practical solution." This committee was composed of twelve members, two each from the Army and Navy, one each representing the Smithsonian Institution, the Weather Bureau, and the National Bureau of Standards. Five additional members were chosen "who shall be acquainted with the needs of aeronautical science, either civil or military, or skilled in aeronautical engineering or its allied sciences." Brigadier General George P. Scriven, Chief Signal Officer of the Army, was chairman of the committee, Walcott was elected chairman of the Executive Committee. President Woodrow Wilson appointed Durand as one of the civilian members of the Committee.

Durand became Chairman of the NACA in the fall of 1916 at the second meeting of the full committee.