Arthur M. Young ’27

Arthur M. Young died of cancer May 30, 1995, at his home in Berkeley.

He came to us from the Haverford School, won the Class of 1861 and Bulit prizes, and majored in mathematics.

Convinced that a machine that could fly vertically was practical, Arthur set up a workshop in his father's barn in Radnor, Penn., where he tested his ideas. Many of his machines blew up from stress, while he hid behind a woodpile. Eventually, however, he developed stabilizers that enabled them to hover.

In 1942, after 14 years of experimentation, he produced the first helicopter to be certified by the Civil Aeronautics Administration as safe for commercial use, and he also developed the first helicopter with an enclosed cockpit for Bell Aircraft. His model Bell 47D, hangs in the Museum of Modern Art Gallery in N.Y.C.

Arthur left Bell in 1947 and wrote several books on philosophy. He later set up an organization at Berkeley called The Institute for the Study of Consciousness.

Arthur married Priscilla Page in 1933. They divorced in 1948, and he married Ruth Forbes Young, an artist and a founder of the Intl. Peace Academy, who survives him. To her, the class extends its sympathy in the loss of one of its most original and brilliant thinkers.

The Class of 1927