Meredith Gourdine

Meredith Charles "Flash" Gourdine (September 26, 1929- November 20, 1998) was an American athlete, engineer and physicist.

Meredith Gourdine
BornSeptember 26, 1929
Newark, New Jersey
DiedNovember 20, 1998 (1998-11-21) (aged 69)
Houston, Texas
Alma materBrooklyn Technical High School
B.S. Cornell University
Ph.D. Caltech
Known forElectrogasdynamics
Olympic medal record
Men’s Athletics
Representing  United States
1952 HelsinkiLong jump

Education

Gourdine graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School. He earned a BS in Engineering Physics from Cornell University in 1053, where he was selected for membership in the Quill and Dagger society.[1][2][3] In 1960 he earned a Ph.D. in Engineering Physics from the California Institute of Technology while working as a Senior Research Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 1958-60.[4]

Career

Scientific career

In 1964 Gourdine founded a research and development firm, Gourdine Laboratories, in Livingston, New Jersey. In 1973 he founded Energy Innovations, a company that produced direct-energy conversion devices in Houston, Texas.[1] The companies developed engineering techniques to aid removing smoke from buildings and disperse fog from airport runways, and converting low-grade coal into inexpensive, transportable and high-voltage electrical energy.[1]

Gourdine was inducted to the Dayton, Ohio, Engineering and Science Hall of Fame in 1994.[2] He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1991 and also served as a Trustee of Cornell University.[2] He was an expert in Electrogasdynamics, the generation of electrical energy based on the conversion of the kinetic energy contained in a high-pressure, ionized, moving combustion gas (e.g., Ion wind).[1] He specialized in devising applications, including electric precipator systems. He also invented the Focus Flow Heat Sink, used to cool computer chips.[4]

Gourdine was granted a total of over 30 U.S. patents.[4]

Athletic career

At the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki he won a silver medal for the long jump, one and a half inch short of Jerome Biffle's golden medal jump.[2]

References
  1. "Meredith Gourdine". www.cpnas.org. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  2. "Telluride's Olympians: Meredith "Flash" Gourdine CB50 and Bonnie St. John SP81". Telluride Association. 2018-02-14. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  3. "Meredith C. Gourdine - Engineering and Technology History Wiki". ethw.org. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  4. "Meredith C. Gourdine | Lemelson-MIT Program". lemelson.mit.edu. Retrieved 2020-06-10.


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