Background
William Frederick Durand was born on March 5, 1859, in Bethany, Connecticut, United States. He was the son of William L. and Ruth Coe Durand, local business people.
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1901
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1921
educator engineer officer scientist
William Frederick Durand was born on March 5, 1859, in Bethany, Connecticut, United States. He was the son of William L. and Ruth Coe Durand, local business people.
Educated in the public schools, Durand entered the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1876, long before aviation became a technological possibility. He did well at Annapolis, graduating second in his class in 1880. He immediately entered the Naval Engineering Corps, where he worked on the problems of marine engineering. Adept in his duties, he was sent by the Navy to work on a Doctor of Philosophy project in engineering. Durand graduated from Lafayette College in 1888.
Durand began his career working as a professor of mechanical engineering at the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Michigan in 1889. He remained there until 1891, when he moved to Cornell University to teach marine engineering.
In 1904, Durand moved to Stanford University on the West Coast, ostensibly to teach mechanical engineering. He soon became involved in the new technology of airplanes—the Wright brothers had made their historical flight the previous year—and began studying the problems of flight. Over the next several years, Durand created an aeronautical engineering curriculum at Stanford that became one of the best in the nation. By 1915, both Durand personally and his department at Stanford collectively had been recognized as leaders in solving the problems of flight.
The United States government recognized the importance of fostering aeronautical development by establishing the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1915. Its purpose, as set forth in the Naval Appropriations Act of 1915, was “to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight, with a view to their practical solution.” Governed by a committee of largely non-government experts, the NACA became an enormously important government research and development organization for the next half century, materially enhancing the development of aeronautics.
Durand served as a member of the committee from 1915 until 1933, and again between 1941 and 1945. He also chaired the committee from 1917 to 1918, during World War I. Over the years, most of the research conducted under NACA auspices was done in its own facilities, but until the first of those facilities was constructed in 1918, the committee let contracts to educational institutions. Durand’s research team at Stanford led all other contractors with its NACA-funded experimentation with Propellers. This would have been considered a conflict of interest at a different time, but in the midst of World War I, and given the lax regulatory environment of the era, no one questioned it. This and other contracts paid off: the NACA’s research on aircraft engines was the first major success of the organization and helped to develop the Liberty Engine, the major contribution the United States made to aeronautics during World War I.
On September 12, 1925, President Calvin Coolidge established the Morrow Board to study the use of aircraft in national defense. Among its members was William Durand, who lent considerable experience and expertise in aeronautics to its deliberations. The board held hearings and found that there was little agreement as to how many usable aircraft the Army Air Service had. While it rejected the most strident claims for air power, its report of November 30, 1925, recommended the appointment of two additional airmen as brigadier generals, one to head procurement and the other to command the flying schools. The board also recommended increased appropriations for the training of airmen and the development of modern airplanes, and suggested changing the name of the Army Air Service to Air Corps. In response, Congress passed the Air Corps Bill of 1926 to formalize many of these recommendations, setting the stage for the creation of the modern military air arm that would emerge during World War II.
In addition to serving on the Morrow Board, Durand participated in numerous other technical committees and advisory boards employed by a wide range of government entities. For instance, in 1929 he was a member of the advisory board of engineers for the Boulder Dam project, a significant effort that brought greatly increased supplies of water and electricity to the American southwest. He was also a member of the National Research Council between 1915 and 1945, and chair of the Navy Department’s Special Committee on Airship Design and Construction in 1935.
In March, 1941, at the request of Hap Arnold, chief of staff of the Army Air Forces, the NACA created a special committee to study jet propulsion. Under Durand’s leadership, this special committee met seven times in five months, finally recommending that the military award industrial firms contracts to study jet propulsion.
While Durand had been recognized as a leading authority in aeronautics since the early 1900s, he was especially revered as the sage of the discipline in the postwar era.
Durand’s efforts as both engineer and advisor were important for the development of the jet engine and its application to military aircraft near the end of World War II. Durand received numerous awards from government, industry, and foundations for his contributions to the development of aviation in America, including the Presidential Award of Merit, which he won in 1946.
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1901(This work has been selected by scholars as being cultural...)
1921He was a member of National Advisory Committee for Civil Aeronautics, Morrow Board, and National Research Council.
