Chul Park, world-renowned aerospace scientist, educator, and pioneer inaerothermodynamics, died on 31 December 2025. He was 91.
Park obtained Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in aeronautical engineeringat Seoul National University. After completing service as a lieutenant in the Republic ofKorea Air Force, Park moved to London, where he received a doctorate inaeronautics at the Imperial College. In 1964, Park began a 27-year career at NASA Ames Research Center.
At NASA Ames, Park served as chief of the Experimental Aerothermodynamics Section, and later as a staff scientist, contributing to national programs in hypersonics, thermal protection, and planetary exploration. His pioneeringresearch in nonequilibrium gas dynamics and radiative heating remains central to spacecraft design today, influencing the human and robotic missions of NASA and other national, international, and private space-explorationorganizations.
Park authored an extensive body of work — over 250 publications, including the seminal 1990 book NonequilibriumHypersonic Aerothermodymics — whose impact is reflected in thousands of citations and in the continued use of hismodels and methods throughout the aerospace community. He received numerous prestigious awards, including theNASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement (1989), the AIAA Thermophysics Award (1994), the NASA Medal forExceptional Achievement (1996), the AIAA Plasmadynamics and Lasers Award (2011), and the Alvin Seiff Memorial Award(2017), and was named an AIAA Fellow in 2000.
In addition to his vast research contributions, Park was a gifted and revered mentor and educator, holding teaching positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of Stuttgart (Germany),Tohoku University (Japan), and the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He was motivated, both asscientist and student of history, by a broader concern for the wellbeing of our planet and life on it. He authored andpresented technical papers on novel approaches to reduce global warming and predicting the spread and impact of meteor fragments descending through Earth’s atmosphere. In 2023 he published a book (in Korean), Alchemy andthe Naked Emperor: How Did Science and Technology Develop?
Park also pursued numerous passions outside of science and technology, including obtaining a private pilot’s license atage 70.
