- William Durand redirects here. For the medieval canon lawyer, see Guillaume Durand.
William F. Durand was a United States naval officer and pioneer mechanical engineer. He was the first civilian chair of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the forerunner of NASA.[1] A native of Connecticut, he was a member of the first graduating class of Birmingham High School in Derby, Connecticut(now Derby High School) in 1877. He graduated second in his class at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and received his Ph.D. from Lafayette College. He went on to teach at Cornell University and Stanford University, teaching that school's first course in Aeronautics, the second offered by any school in the country (the first was offered by M.I.T.) He helped rebuild Stanford after the 1906 earthquake, and the department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering building bears his name. A memorial there reads: "His first professional assignment in 1880 was on the USS Tennessee, a full rigged wooden ship with auxiliary steam power. His last, 1942-46 was as chairman of the National Aeronautical Commission for the development of jet propulsion for aircraft." He died in 1958 at the age of 99.
