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Manuel Stein went to work for NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) in 1944 and left NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) in 1988. His research contributions spanned five decades of extremely defining times for the aerospace industry.
Problems arising from the analysis and design of efficient thin plate and shell aerospace structures have stimulated research over the past half century. The primary structural technology drivers during Dr. Stein's career included 1940s aluminum aircraft, 1950s jet aircraft, 1960s launch vehicles and advanced spacecraft, 1970s reusable launch vehicles and commercial aircraft, and 1980s composite aircraft. Dr. Stein's research was driven by these areas, and he made lasting contributions to each.
Dr. Stein's research can be characterized by a judicious mixture of physical insight into the problem, understanding of the basic mechanisms, mathematical modeling of the observed phenomena, and extraordinary analytical and numerical solution methodologies of the resulting mathematical models.
The breadth and depth of Dr. Stein's contributions led to his recoginition as an international authority on buckling of plate and shell structures, and to his being awarded the NASA medal for exceptional scientific achievement.
Although Dr. Stein made numerous outstanding technical advancements througout his career, perhaps his most lasting legacy is the unselfish sharing of his immense technical knowledge and insight with numerous researchers at and associated with the NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia. Dr. Stein's contribution to the aerospace community is poorly measured by publication numbers, but must instead be evaluated by technical quality and significance and by the several generations of structural mechanists that he mentored, consulted with, or otherwise positively influenced.
from the 1997 tribute by:
Martin M. Mikulas
Michael Card
Jim Peterson
James Starnes
The complete tribute is reproduced in the link, "Dr. Manuel Stein".
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