This is an edited transcript of an oral history interview of Francis Clauser conducted by Peter Westwick. Topics covered in the interview include: Transition from wood to metal planes; Caltech in the 1930s; Caltech-Douglas connection; Emergence of academic aeronautics programs; Design-manufacturing interaction; World War II; Women in WWII; Supersonic aircraft; Transition from airplanes to space; Universities and engineering; Caltech and JPL, GALCIT; Security clearances. Francis Clauser was born May 25, 1913, along with his older identical twin brother Milton. His father died when they were 17 and the two brothers entered Kansas City Junior College, but soon transferred to Caltech. Francis got his undergraduate degree in physics and continued with his brother to grad school at Caltech in aeronautical engineering under Theodor von Kármán, with a dissertation on supersonic flow. He and Milton received PhDs in 1937 and were hired by Douglas Aircraft, where Francis was soon promoted to head of aerodynamic research. He went to Germany under Project Paperclip at the end of World War II to investigate German aeronautics and rocket research, and then returned to Douglas. In addition to work on supersonic aerodynamics, he authored an important 1946 report titled “Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship,” issued as the first report from Douglas’s new Project RAND. The report was an important early statement of the prospects for satellites. He left Douglas in 1946 to chair the aeronautics department Johns Hopkins University; his research there included important work on turbulence and boundary layers. In this period he also consulted for Hughes and then Ramo-Wooldridge on missile and space projects, and briefly for the CIA on interpretation of Soviet missile-launch data. In 1965 he went to UC Santa Cruz from 1965 to 1969, where he served as vice chancellor and helped create an engineering school. In 1968 he sat on a space advisory group that led to the Space Shuttle, reviving an idea Clauser had advanced earlier. In 1969 he returned to Caltech as chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science. He stepped down as chair in 1974 and retired from Caltech in 1980. He traveled often in retirement with his wife Catherine. He died March 3, 2013, at the age of 99. [Object file name], Aerospace Oral History Project, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
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