Born: Germany
Primarily active in: United States of America

1951 - 2016

Dr. Friedrich Karl Straub was born on July 6, 1951 in Gifhorn, Germany. He graduated summa cum laude from nearby University of Hannover (Leibniz Universität Hannover) in 1975, with a master’s in mechanical engineering. From there, he received a scholarship to attend the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he earned his doctorate in aerospace engineering in 1980 under Prof. Peretz Friedmann.

Straub began working for Hughes Helicopters in Culver City, California. Then, along with many colleagues, he moved to Mesa in 1985, after the company was acquired by McDonnell Douglas, then merged with Boeing in 1997. Straub had an outstanding career as a researcher and manager spanning 36 years. He co-authored several patents, presented dozens of papers at national and international technical conferences, and published several papers in technical journals. He was a co-author on 26 AHS Forum papers, and numerous other AHS conference papers, as well as eight refereed papers in the Journal of the AHS. Straub was selected as a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) in 2014; in 2015, he was selected as an 67AHS Technical Fellow, which is “granted to Society members whose career-based technical accomplishments towards the goals and objectives of the vertical flight industry constitute an outstanding technical achievement.” He was the AHS Arizona Chapter’s technical director and responsible for running its annual scholarship for many, many years.

Dr. Friedrich Karl Straub passed away on Sept. 5, 2016, after a months-long battle with pancreatic cancer.  He was a senior manager of dynamics technology and technical fellow of The Boeing Company.

AHS Update: Vertiflite November/December 2016