BY RICHARD A. SEEBASS

HARVARD LOMAX, a research fellow and senior staff scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center and consulting professor at Stanford University, died on May 1, 1999. He was a gentle and quiet man who provided many significant advances in aerodynamics and fluid mechanics through his deep knowledge of mathematics and computers, his remarkable inventiveness, his dogged diligence, and his persuasive technical leadership.

Harvard was born in Broken Bow, Nebraska, on April 18, 1922. In 1940, when he had graduated from high school, his aunt, Edith Stephenson, encouraged him to move to California, which he did. For a while he made her San Francisco home his California headquarters. She encouraged his study at Stanford, where he thought he might become a writer. She was more practical and realized his talent was in mathematics. Soon he was studying mechanical engineering at Stanford. While there, he met Joan Whitmore, who received her degree in social science and psychology. They were married December 31, 1943. With a subsequent master’s degree in music, Joan taught both piano and music at DeAnza College, where she conducted the senior citizen chorus for over twenty years. They had three children, Harvard Laird (1945), James Whitmore (1948), and Melinda (1959).