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Shirley Thomas
ACADEMIC SCHOLARSHIP
The Aerospace Historical Society established an Academic Scholarship in 2010 in memory of its founder
Dr. Shirley Thomas.
The award is presented annually at the International von Kármán Wings Award banquet to a student in aerospace engineering or a related science that shows promise for continued future contributions to the field.
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Shirley Thomas Ph.D. was a woman of many talents a radio/television actress/writer/producer, author, and professor at the University of Southern California.
Born in Glendale, California, Dr. Shirley Thomas earned her B.A. in 1960 and her Ph.D. in Communications in 1967 from the University of Sussex in the UK. She was also awarded a diploma by the Russian Federation of Cosmonautics in 1995.
Dr. Thomas authored fifteen books, including her eight volume series on astronauts Men of Space (published between 1960 and 1968). She presented more than 30 papers at international professional society meetings. Dr. Thomas wrote documentary films for NASA, the USAF Air University, and provided senior consulting services to JPL, Stanford Research Institute, and George Washington University. She also organized and chaired the Woman's Space Symposia from 1962-1973.
Dr. Thomas was so impressed by Theodore von Kármán's genius the after his death, she set out to get a U.S. Postage Stamp issued in his honor. It took her 26 years, succeeding in 1992. She also founded and chaired the Aerospace Historical Society in 1984 the organization has presented the international Von Kármán Wings award to outstanding and innovative contributors to the world of aerospace.
Dr. Thomas was also a prominent figure in the early days of the United States Space Program. She was the recipient of the Air Force Association's Airpower Arts and Letters Award and in 1991 she received the Aerospace Excellence Award from the California Museum Foundation and a Fellow in the British Interplanetary Society.
Dr. Thomas was an Associate Fellow and advocate for the national Society for Technical Communication (as well as the local Los Angeles Chapter, LASTC), she taught "Technical and Fundamental Writing" in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California for well over three decades. In an article from the LASTC the Technograph she wrote: "In the wondrous world of tomorrow, where we all will be speeding along the information Superhighway, and like spiders we will be climbing the World Wide Web, the capability that can prove most stabilizing is that of technical writing. This is a talent diligently acquired, infinitely useful in any form of communication, and valuable to any application. That is the best kept secret of technical writing."
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Gwendolyn Johnson is pursuing her doctoral studies in Aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology under Prof. Michael Ortiz, and will graduate in August 2012. Her work in robust collision detection, algorithms for simulating non-smooth contact interactions, and optimal control is motivated by the desire to understand, design, and optimize self-assembling space systems. She has applied several numerical tools to optimizing the design of an autonomous reconfigurable space telescope. She earned a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008 and a M.S. degree in Aeronautics from Caltech in 2009. 
Philipp Boettcher a graduate student in GALCIT was awarded the 2010 Shirley Thomas Academic scholarship for performing novel research on thermal ignition mechanisms. Philipp received his BS in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Purdue University and joined Caltech as a graduate student in 2006 to pursue his PhD. He has also exhibited excellent mentoring and leadership qualities.