Karl Otto Lange - Epilogue

Epilogue

Dr. Lange received an honorary Doctor of Science at the University of Kentucky May 1972 Commencement.

The Dr. Karl Otto Lange Memorial Fellowship at the University of Kentucky College of Engineering supports a U.S. citizen and native of Kentucky, ranked in the top 25% of student’s discipline’s class, who wishes to pursue a master of science degree in the manufacturing systems engineering program.

Dr. Lange died at age 70, on November 29, 1973. Dr. Karl O. Lange, former Director of the University of Kentucky's Wenner-Gren Aeronautical Laboratory, was a powerful force in the early days of soaring in Germany and in the U.S. from 1931 until the sport was shut down during WWII.

As a professor of meteorology at MIT and Harvard in those days, he was instrumental in explaining to soaring pilots the intricacies of air mass analysis, and, as Director of the National Soaring Contests in 1936 and 1937, he did much to bring proper standards of organization and operation to the annual meets at Harris Hill. Lange was a Director of the Soaring Society from 1933 to 1939.

Many pilots today use Lange-designed barographs featuring a fixed reference datum from which all aneroid pen deflections are measured. He was a man of many talents, a creative inventor and designer with interests ranging from pest control by aircraft to training chimpanzees for the Space Program.

His survivors are his wife Elizabeth, two sons, and five grandchildren at the time of his death.