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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:

Brian M. Lempriere - His Role in Aerospace

Brian wanted to design airplanes since seeing them fly overhead at age 10, but ended up studying the engineering behavior of metals and composite materials in extreme environments. At a time of international unrest over the Cold War with Russia, this led to military assignments with Lockheed and Boeing, and eventually to efforts on the High Speed Civil Transport airplane.

His career started when he was awarded a student apprenticeship at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), Farnborough from the British Ministry of Supply in 1949. He was awarded a King George VI Memorial Fellowship to study in the USA from the English Speaking Union in 1954. Through these awards, he received a B. Sc. from London University (1954), an M. Ae. E from the Polytechnic Institute.of Brooklyn in 1956, and a PhD from Stanford (1962), all in aeronautics.

- He taught a course in aircraft structures at Cranfield College of Aeronautics, and occasional courses at Brooklyn and Stanford.
- He supported US Air Force evaluation of ICBM survivability, ensuring that USA would survive a pre-emptive Russian nuclear strike.
- He supported a US Air Force study of the mobile basing concept for ICBMs, revealing that it would not serve as a deterrent.
- He supported the development of means of non-destructive evaluation of composite materials for the US Air Force, NASA, and Boeing, including ultrasound, computed tomography and eddy current techniques, leading to the publication, in retirement, of a book "Ultrasound and Elastic Waves".
- He holds two patents, one for improved resolution in computed tomography and one for a Compton back-scattering gage, and has published 10 articles and papers, numerous conference presentations, and reviewed papers for the Journal of Applied Mechanics.
- He served as chairman of an ASTM subcommittee on shear testing.