In the first-level restaurant of the Eiffel Tower, high above the rooftops of Paris, 200 guests gathered last week to honor a hero of aviation, Dr. Theodore von Karman, who had reached his 75th birthday. The guest list read like a bluebook of aviation, and most of the guests, now generals, admirals, statesmen or heads of corporations, had known and admired Von Karman and his eccentric genius for decades. Without the principles of aerodynamics that he discovered, they could not be building or flying high-speed modern aircraft.
Born in Budapest in 1881, Scholar von...