In 1972, George Springer attended a conference in Los Angeles to discuss composites, materials lighter and stronger than aluminum and other engineering staples. It was outside his field of expertise, but Springer—who’d been invited by the event organizer, his friend Stephen Tsai—recognized the revolution underway. “He saw tremendous potential, and he was thinking that this was where he could make an even bigger impact,” says Juan Alonso, chair of Stanford’s department of aeronautics and astronautics.
Photo: Courtesy Springer Family
George Stephen Springer, an emeritus professor and former chair of the department of aeronautics and astronautics, and an expert in the field of composite materials, died on August 15. He was 90.
As a child in Budapest, Hungary, Springer narrowly survived a wartime ammunitions explosion that destroyed the apartment complex where his family lived. Then, in 1956, amid the tumult of the Hungarian Revolution, he fled the country weeks before receiving his undergraduate degree, landing in Australia and finishing his studies three years later at the University of Sydney. He earned two master’s degrees and a PhD from Yale in 1962, and later became a professor at the University of Michigan, where he cemented his standing as an expert in fluid mechanics.
When Springer turned his focus to composites, one thing limited their utility: the materials’ tendency to absorb moisture from the air, degrade, and weaken. “At that time, nobody knew how to solve the problem,” says Tsai, an emeritus professor of aeronautics and astronautics known for his expertise in the design methodology of composite materials and structures; he and Springer met as graduate students at Yale. “It threatened the future of composites.”
Springer developed a model that explained the effect of moisture absorption over time and published what “is still recognized as the only authoritative paper on that subject even today, 60 years later,” says Tsai. His work cleared a path to the widespread use of composite materials in spacecraft, airplanes, race cars, and sailboats; sports equipment, including golf clubs; and prosthetic limbs and other medical devices. He was a trusted expert who worked as a consultant for NASA, the U.S. Air Force, and the Navy, as well as within the aerospace, automotive, sports equipment, and biomedical industries.
Second only to his children and grandchildren, his students—“upwards of 10,000” in a 50-year career—were Springer’s greatest source of pride. His impact on other people’s lives would be his legacy: “What else is there?” he said in a 2016 interview with the Stanford Historical Society.
Springer’s wife, Susan, predeceased him by one day. He is survived by daughters Elizabeth Greer and Mary, and four grandchildren.
Kali Shiloh is a staff writer at Stanford. Email her at kshiloh@stanford.edu.
