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Among these distinguished people we find besides pilots, engineers, inventors and constructors, scientists, philosophers, artists and utopists. The first prize was clearly dedicated to the Wright brothers, the second to the rocketman Wernher von Braun and the third to Robert Goddard, who invented and launched the first liquid fuel rocket. Leonardo da Vinci (4th) was honoured for his manifold concepts including a helicopter and the parachute. Charles Lindberg (6th) was awarded for the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris and Neil Armstrong (9th) for the first human walk on the moon.
Ranking as number ten was Daniel Bernoulli (1700?1782), "the Swiss mathematician, whose principle explains an airfoil's lift". In my short appreciation, I introduced him as the most versatile member of the exceptional Bernoulli family: he was a physician, physiologist, nautical engineer, astronomer and mathematician, but above all an inspired physicist. Thanks to his sense for practicable solutions he won ten times the first prize in the scientific competitions of the Academie des Sciences de Paris. Only his friend and fellow-citizen of Basel surpassed him with twelve triumphs. The most outstanding work of Daniel Bernoulli is beyond any doubt his Hydrodynamica, which he wrote in Latin during his stay at the young Academy of St Petersburg from 1725 till 1733. One of the numerous chapters is dedicated to the frictionless streaming of fluids, and "Bernoulli's Equation", derived from the conservation of energy, is definitely the most important theoretical base of aviation. The award is deposited at the University of Basel.
--- H R Striebel