Dr. Reuven Leopold
Award: Harold E. Saunders Award
Year: 1986
Recipient:
Dr. Reuven Leopold
Reason:
For his significant contribution to naval engineering as set forth in the following:
In recognition of outstanding achievements as a naval engineer both in the U.S. Government and in private industry. Dr. Reuven Leopold has forged a career of distinguished accomplishments at a relatively youthful stage of his life. While teaching at MIT, he participated in the successful application of finite element theory to the prediction of subcavitating propeller performance; he made major contributions to original software which led to today's process for designing ship propellers; and he developed unique software for mathematical optimization of ship designs by using exponential random search techniques. Dr. Leopold made a major contribution to the SWATH design genealogy almost two decades ago when he obtained a patent for a small waterplane area twin hull form called TRISEC.
In his first period with industry, in the position of Director of Ship Engineering at the Ingalls Division of the Litton Corporation, he provided exceptional design leadership, which is reflected by the success of both the 00-963 class destroyer and the LHA helicopter assault ship classes. Moving to government service in the 1970s, Dr. Leopold served as the U.S. Navy's Technical Director for Ship Design. During that decade, his technical leadership was a major factor in implementing the Navy's reassertion of its historical lead role in conceptual and preliminary ship design, these designs now manifesting in the bulk of the 600-ship Navy.
Dr. Leopold has authored and coauthored over thirty technical papers, manuals and books on the theories, processes, and decisions involved in ship designs. He initiated and coordinated the preparation of the "Naval Ship Design Manual" for the Naval Sea Systems Command. This outstanding reference filled a longstanding critical need in the Navy, just as the two-volume effort, "Hydrodynamics in Ship Design," authored for SNAME by Captain Harold Saunders, did in an earlier era.
Dr. Leopold's achievements and expertise have been recognized on many occasions, and he has served on Senior Advisory Boards of the Chief of Naval Operations, the Secretary of Defense, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Naval Studies Board. These positions of trust and counsel at the highest levels of the nation's defense establishment, his many contributions, and his internationally recognized preeminence in the field of naval engineering combine to make Dr. Reuven Leopold eminently qualified to receive the Society's Harold E. Saunders Award.