Tony Maxworthy, distinguished professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC), died March 8, 2013, at age 79.
Born in England, Maxworthy earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Imperial College in 1954. He earned a master’s from Princeton in 1955 and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1960, both in mechanical engineering.
He then worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., before joining USC in 1967. He became a full professor in 1970, and from 1979 to 1989 he chaired the mechanical engineering department.
At USC, his creativity and insight won him international recognition in fluid dynamics. His research provided a better understanding of the dynamics of weather patterns, the behavior of avalanches, and the thermal structure of lakes, oceans, and the atmosphere, among other subjects.
Maxworthy was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a life fellow of Clare Hall at Cambridge University. In 2005, he received the G.I. Taylor Medal of the Society of Engineering Science, and in 2011, the APS Fluid Dynamics Prize.
Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.