Henri Coandă

Henri Coandă (1886 to 1972) was a Romanian inventor and aerodynamics pioneer, born in Bucharest on 7 June 1886, the son of General Constantin Coandă. He studied in Bucharest and at the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg, Berlin, built a missile-aeroplane for the Romanian Army in 1905, and in 1910 graduated at the head of the first class of aeronautical engineers at the school in Paris now known as SUPAERO. That year, using the workshop of Gianni Caproni, he designed, built and piloted the Coandă-1910, a thermojet aircraft whose piston engine drove a compressor feeding two burners instead of a propeller. His wind tunnel experiments led to the discovery of the aerodynamic effect that bears his name. Between 1911 and 1914 he was technical director of the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company, designing the Bristol-Coanda monoplanes, and he died in Bucharest on 25 November 1972.