Born: United States of America
Primarily active in: United States of America

Dean E. Cooper, an employee of Sikorsky, held five patents and wrote 13 technical papers. In 1980, the company recognized Dean for inventing a redundant flight control system, which could provide full rotor control following a flight control cable failure. During his years at Sikorsky, he traveled to Russia with Sergei Sikorsky, where he obtained his land and sea pilot’s licenses. During 1993 – 1995, he served with distinction as the Society’s Technical Director, leading the Technical Council and the technical agenda of the Society. In 1995, he increased the number of parallel technical sessions at the AHS Annual Forum in Fort Worth to accommodate an additional 50 papers, many of which addressed new fields such as avionics, systems, HUMs, as well as more classical areas such as dynamics and aerodynamics. Current Forum’s are planned using the same basic format developed and implemented by Dean. During those years, Dean also served on the AHS Executive Committee and Board of Directors. Dean retired in 1998 as Sikorsky Aircraft’s Director of Technical Engineering after 41 years of service. Dean, formerly of Trumbull, Connecticut, passed away on August 3rd at his summer home in Naples, Maine, following a long battle with cancer.