ABSTRACT
Emile Allard graduated from Liège University as a mining engineer. Being mad about flying airplanes as a student he founded a company with a friend whose purpose was airplane construction. He also returned to France to obtain instructions in piloting. The Belgian Aero-Club issued him brevet number 1. He returned to Liège University to get acquainted with the wing theory of Nikolai E. Zhukovsky (1847-1921). Allard in 1911 moved to the Belgian Congo designing a 400 km long oil pipeline from Matadi to Leopoldville. Once back in his country, he was appointed Lecturer of aviation at Université de Liège. During World War I he became a specialist in a Belgian aviation unit. He took interest in the aerodynamic laboratory of Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) in Auteuil, being particularly interested in designing wind tunnels, in mechanical similitude and in the analysis of aerodynamic experimentation. In 1919, he returned to Belgium again to be appointed Lecturer of airplane construction at Université Libre of Bruxelles, and director of Service Technique de l’Aéronautique in 1920 of the National Defense Ministry. Allard shortly later proposed the erection of an aerodynamic laboratory inaugurated in 1923 at Rhode-Saint-Genèse close to Brussels. He was promoted to full professor in 1925 and institute director from 1939. Most of his books were written when at Brussels and he initiated also large developments of ‘his laboratory’ at RhodeSaint-Genèse, where a supersonic wind tunnel according to the design of Jakob Ackeret (1898-1981) was installed. Towards 1950, friends felt that Allard suffered from overwork, they warned him too late and he passed away.
