George S. Springer, expert on lightweight composite materials, has died

George Stephen Springer, the Paul Pigott Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, and professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University, a renowned expert in the field of composite materials, and a respected consultant to the aerospace industry and NASA, died Aug. 15, 2024. He was 90.

Born in Budapest, Hungary, on Dec. 12, 1933, Springer narrowly survived both the wartime bombing of his home in 1945 when he was 11 years old and a harrowing escape from his homeland during the Hungarian Revolution in October 1956, weeks before he was due to receive his undergraduate engineering degree. After boarding a train packed with fellow refugees, he survived gunfire near the border and made his way to a Red Cross camp in Vienna, eventually finding passage on a ship bound for Australia. A Commonwealth scholarship gained him entry to the University of Sydney, where, despite having no English skills and having to repeat several of his university courses, he graduated at the top of his class in mechanical engineering in 1959.

Springer left Australia for Yale University, where he earned two master’s degrees and a PhD, and in 1962 took a job at MIT, focusing on molecular gas dynamics, due in part to the United States’ growing interest in space flight. He accepted a position at the University of Michigan in 1967, re-centering his research on the automotive industry and the environment. He became chief technical advisor to the United Auto Workers, but also began shifting his attention from fluid mechanics to composite materials used in the aerospace industry.

“He began doing some truly remarkable work as a structural analyst using his fluid mechanics background,” says Stephen Tsai, professor (research) emeritus at the Stanford Engineering Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Springer’s colleague and close friend. “I asked him to help me in solving some very serious problems I was working on for the Air Force. Industry people had been trying to work on these problems and doing a poor job, but George got down to fundamentals. His work on the curing process of composites, the effect of moisture absorption on those materials, and the erosion process of aircraft materials as they fly through the rain is still used today.”

After meeting Stanford professor of aeronautics and astronautics Nicholas Hoff at an international conference in Tokyo, Springer joined the Stanford Aeronautics and Astronautics faculty in 1983 and began establishing the Stanford Structures and Composites Laboratory (SACL).

“One remarkable thing about George is that he essentially switched careers between very different fields,” says Juan Alonso, the Vance D. and Arlene C. Coffman Professor in the School of Engineering and the James and Anna Marie Spilker Chair of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “He was at the top of his game in fluid mechanics at Michigan, but had the courage, intellect, and confidence to see that the field of structural mechanics and composite materials was going to be a tremendous opportunity for aerospace. He risked making that jump and became not only successful, but a recognized authority in the field, and that’s not typical. We all try to renew ourselves, but George did it to a much larger extent than anybody else I’ve known.”

At Stanford, along with his former Michigan doctoral student Fu-Kuo Chang, Springer continued the work he had begun at Michigan, researching the delicate balance of heat, pressure, and vacuum required to manufacture composites.

“George Springer came up with the theoretical models and computer codes to analyze the process of composite manufacturing so industry can use it on a large scale,” says Chang, now SACL’s director. “He was largely responsible for building up this field of study at Stanford and for attracting many talented people here.”

Springer’s work was critical not only to the evolution and manufacture of lightweight composites, but to understanding how they should be designed for specific purposes – such as airplane wings that bend in a certain way to achieve extreme high performance.

“His legacy is to have taken composite materials into the next century,” Alonso says. “Today we’re looking at how best to utilize these materials in the context of entire vehicles such as airplanes, rockets, and cars. We’re also interested in multifunctionality, such as embedding sensors to indicate whether tiny cracks are developing inside the composite that could lead to failure.”

During his time at Stanford, Springer was a consultant to industry and government, including Lockheed, GM, IBM, McDonnell Douglas, Rockwell, Bendix, Vought Corporation, NASA, and the U.S. Air Force. He advised NASA on issues concerning the space shuttle, and his research influenced vehicle and sports equipment markets. He worked as an advisor to Golf Digest evaluating the latest golf equipment technology, and consulted on the fiberglass bodies of the Pontiac Fiero, racing yachts, ski and snowboard equipment, and Beech’s Starship I all-composite airplane. He worked on windmill blades for Altamont Pass, and was involved in the use of composites in biomedical equipment, including composite bone replacements and a swallowable remote-controlled video capsule for examining the stomach. While at the University of Michigan, he worked on a respirator for infants.

Springer received a wide range of awards and honors in his field and was a prolific author, producing more than 200 technical papers and authoring, co-authoring, or editing 12 books, including Mechanics of Composite Structures.

During his career at Stanford – including his role as department chair from 1990 to 2001 – Springer nurtured a new generation of young assistant professors and worked to ensure the department fostered a collegial atmosphere. He quickly gained a reputation as a demanding but beloved teacher who consistently emphasized the importance of effective communication.

“As a teacher he would work with you day and night to perfect your presentation, which he felt was critical to making sure a very complicated problem or process could be explained,” says Chang, his former student. “He taught that it didn’t matter how hard you’d worked; what mattered was making sure your colleagues or audience could easily understand how the problem was solved.”

Springer’s wife, Susan, predeceased him by one day. He is survived by daughters Elizabeth Greer and Mary Springer, sons-in-law Rusty Greer and Stephen Stott, and grandchildren Katy, Margaret, and Sam Greer and Brandon Zasio.