HomeDate: 2024-03-01
Academician Yao-Tsu Wu passed away in the United States on December 16, 2023. He was 99 years old.
Dr. Wu was an internationally renowned fluid mechanics and engineering scientist, specializing in aeronautics, applied physical sciences, and fluid physics. Dr. Wu made significant contributions to various fields of fluid mechanics, including the free streamline flow theory of cavity flows, jet flows, and wake flows, oceanic and wind energy, nonlinear water waves, and the flow phenomena of organisms moving through gases or liquids.
Dr. Wu earned his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1952, and served as Professor there for more than 40 years, until his retirement in 1996, where he received the Caltech Distinguished Teaching Award. From 1964 to 1965, Dr. Wu served as Visiting Professor at the Universität Hamburg. He also served as a member of the Council of Academia Sinica for two terms, contributing greatly to the development of academic research at Academia Sinica.
Dr. Wu has received several honors, including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship, the Fluid Dynamics Prize from the American Physical Society, the Theodore von Kármán Medal from the American Association of Civil Engineers, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Mechanical Engineers.
Dr. Wu was a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and a Foreign Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr. Wu was elected Academia Sinica Academician in 1984.
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※ The Research Center for Applied Sciences website has also published a eulogy 〈A Loving Remembrance and Tribute to Professor Theodore Yaotsu Wu and Dr. Chin-Hua Wu〉 written by Academician Chen S. Tsai (Link)
