Ernest Edwin Sechler

Who is Ernest Edwin Sechler?

Ernest Edwin Sechler was an aerospace engineer and scientist who specialized in thin-shell structures. He earned his doctorate in 1934 at Caltech as one of the early students of Theodore von Kármán with a dissertation on the mechanics of thin-plate compression. He continued in this line of work, which had broad and deep applications in the structural aspects of aircraft and missiles. He played a key role under von Kármán in building GALCIT and the two collaborated on the structural design of the thin-shelled dome of Palomar Observatory. He wrote two of the standard references on shell structures, Airplane structural analysis and design and Elasticity in Engineering. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1979, the year of his death.