Top 100 Stars of Aerospace

Flight Journal, Apr 2004 by House, Kirk

ALMOST 300 GUESTS gathered in Paris on a hot June 18, 2003, at the 19th-century Salle Wagram, a few steps from the Arc de Triomphe, to honor the Top 100 Stars of Aerospace.

Aviation Week & Space Technology (AWST) established a list of 761 nominees and communicated it for a vote to more than a million aerospace professionals in 180 countries. Voters included members of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences and the Groupement des Industries Francaises Aeronautique et Spatiales. IBM partnered with AWST to develop an electronic voting method.

Though the awards were designed to commemorate the first 100 years of airplane flight, honorees included such figures as Daniel Bernoulli, the 18th-century mathematician who described the principle that governs airfoil lift.

The ceremony was held at the Paris Air Show. As well as contemporary aviation great Sir Freddie Laker, the crowd included the families of such stars as Octave Chanute, Wilbur and Orville Wright, Louis Bleriot, Antoine de St.-Exupery, Charles and Anne Lindbergh and Igor Sikorsky.

The top "Stars," in order, were Wilbur and Orville Wright; Wernher von Braun; Robert Goddard; Leonardo da Vinci and Glenn Curtiss.

-Kirk House