Tribute to Jean-Jacques Philippe

It is with great sadness that we learned on 31 March 2020 of the death of Jean-Jacques Philippe, correspondent of our Academy, legitimately regarded as the father of ONERA’s helicopter activities.

Jean-Jacques PHILIPPE at the American Helicopter Society’s “Dr. Alexander Klemin Award”

Jean-Jacques Philippe has spent his entire career at ONERA and has profoundly influenced every person who has worked closely or remotely on Helicopters, first as a researcher and then as Helicopter Coordinator before retiring in 2005.

He leaves us with an immense legacy:

First of all, respect for his deep knowledge of helicopters: everyone who knows this field knows what they owe him;

Respect for his unfailing dynamism and enthusiasm: how many researchers have reviewed their scientific paper several times on his always relevant remarks;

Respect for his tenacity and confidence in meeting scientific challenges;

Respect for its ability to showcase team members, and its drive to relentlessly present results and imagine future applications;

Then for his intuition, with his accomplice of the DLR, Bernd Gmelin, they managed to build a cooperation between ONERA and the DLR that celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2019.

Finally, for his friendship and his sense of the human, each of us who worked with him, knows how faithful he was in friendship and knew how to share the good and the bad times.

A tribute will be paid to him at an upcoming session of the Academy.