Torkel Weis-Fogh

Torkel Weis-Fogh
File:Torkel Weis-Fogh.jpg
Born	1922 Aarhus, Denmark
Died	13 November 1975(1975-11-13) Cambridge, England
Residence	England
Nationality	Danish
Fields	Entomology Aerodynamics
Institutions	University of Cambridge University of Copenhagen
Alma mater	University of Copenhagen
Doctoral students	Charles Ellington
Known for	Insect aerodynamics Weis-Fogh principle
Influences	August Krogh

Torkel Weis-Fogh (1922–1975) was a Danish zoologist and Professor at the University of Cambridge and the University of Copenhagen. He is best known for his contributions to the understanding of insect flight, especially the fling and clap mechanism used by very small insects.

Education

Weis-Fogh was born in Aarhus and educated at University of Copenhagen.

Research

Weis-Fogh was research assistant to the Danish Nobel Prize–winning physiologist August Krogh, where he studied the flight mechanism of the desert locust.

He pioneered studies of insect flight with Krogh in a classic paper of 1951.

He then spent a year at the Copenhagen Institute of Neurophysiology.

He then went to the University of Cambridge in England for four years, where he discovered a rubbery protein, resilin, in insect cuticle. He continued working on insect flight.

He returned to Copenhagen as Professor of Zoophysiology, and then went back to Cambridge in 1966 to become Professor of Zoology there. In 1973 he devised a mathematical model explaining how extremely small insects such as the thrips or chalcid wasps like Encarsia formosa could fly using clap-and-fling, where conventional steady state aerodynamics did not apply. The British applied mathematician Sir James Lighthill named this mechanism the "Weis-Fogh mechanism of lift generation". His 1973 paper "Quick Estimates of Flight Fitness in Hovering Animals, Including Novel Mechanisms for Lift Production" has been cited at least 75 times.

Awards and honours

The Hanne and Torkel Weis-Fogh fund is named in his honour.