John D. Aanderson Jr. earned his Ph.D. from Ohio State University and is the Curator for Aerodynamics at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum (NASM) and professor emeritus in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. He served as an Air Force officer at Wright-Patterson AFB and later chaired the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Maryland. He occupied the Charles Lindbergh Chair at the NASM from 1986 to 1987.His numerous publications include such books as Fundamentals of Aerodynamics and Introduction to Flight. He won the joint AIAA/ASEE Aerospace Division J. Leland Atwood Award for excellence in aerospace engineering education and the AIAA Pendray Aerospace Literature Award. He is an Honorary Fellow of AIAA and a Fellow of both The Royal Aeronautical Society and the Washington Academy of Sciences.