Dewey Harper Hodges

Dewey Harper Hodges, Professor Emeritus in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, sadly passed away on January 31, 2022, after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease. He joined the faculty in 1986 after a 16-year career at NASA Ames where he also served as a lecturer at Stanford University. Hodges was a respected AE faculty member and scholar who made important contributions in the fields of rotorcraft dynamics, structural dynamics, aeroelasticity, structural mechanics and stability, computational mechanics, and optimal control. He took great care and devotion to the 36 Ph.D. and 42 master’s students who looked up to him as a mentor and friend.

Most of all, he was a beloved and proud family man, always delighted to share the accomplishments and music of his talented family. His son Benjamin Hodges wrote the following, which beautifully captures his life and spirit.

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Dewey Harper Hodges — a committed family man, devoted disciple of Christ, beloved professor, decorated engineer, and one of the foremost aerospace researchers of his generation — died at his home in Dunwoody, Ga., on Jan. 31, 2022, after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease. He was 73 years old.

Born May 18, 1948, Dewey was the fourth and youngest child of Plummer and Etha Hodges. He grew up on the family farm near Cumberland Furnace, Tenn., and came into this world 15 years after his brother David tragically died at the age of 3. His mother believed that Dewey was God’s gift to her to soothe her heart after losing her second child to illness so young.

Born when his father was 47 and his mother was 40, Dewey was nearly 21 years younger than his oldest brother, Plummer Jr., and 15 years younger than his sister, Dorothy. He became an uncle at the age of 2 and played with his nephews and nieces as siblings. As a young boy, he learned to work long, hard days on the farm, acquiring a work ethic he attributed to his parents and maintained throughout the rest of his life. Every tobacco season, during the hottest part of the summer, he crawled between the furrows on his hands and knees, acre by acre beneath the blistering Tennessee sun, gathering cut stalks into bunches and tying twine around the stems before he helped transport them to the barn for curing.

While always thankful for the life lessons he learned on the family farm, Dewey famously walked in the house at age 9 — covered in sweat, dust, and wasp stings after an afternoon of harvesting barley — and told his mother that, when he grew up, he would figure out how to work with his mind. He earned straight A’s in high school, apart from one notorious B in physical education. Following the advice of his high school guidance counselor, he majored in aerospace engineering at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where he earned a scholarship with the U.S. Army ROTC before graduating with high honors in 1969.

After Stanford University selected him for an all-expenses-paid NASA trainee fellowship, he moved across the country to enroll in graduate school. He earned his master’s degree in 1970 and his Ph.D. in 1973 at the age of 24. Following his graduation from Stanford, he became an officer in the U.S. Army; he made captain in 1975 and retired from active service in 1977.

Soon after relocating to California, he underwent a profound religious conversion and met the woman who would become his bride, Margaret Jones. Married on Aug. 14, 1971, Dewey and Margaret raised five sons and enjoyed more than 50 years of marriage.

In 1970, while a student at Stanford, Dewey took a summer job as a research scientist at the U.S. Army Aeronautical Research Laboratory at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. He parlayed that summer job into an illustrious 16-year career at NASA Ames. His many accomplishments at the Moffet Field research center include his seminal work on rotor stability and a 1974 NASA Technical Note, which he co-authored with Earl H. Dowell, detailing what became known as the Hodges-Dowell beam equations. This paper remains among the field’s most cited publications of all time.

In 1986, Dewey moved his family from San Jose, Calif., to Atlanta, Ga., to join the faculty of the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology as a full professor. At Georgia Tech, he became a world-renowned scholar who taught, published landmark papers and classic textbooks, conducted research, and advised graduate students for more than 35 years. While at Tech in 2003, he authored another engineering breakthrough that bears his name. “Hodges’ geometrically exact, fully intrinsic beam equations” have since superseded the Hodges-Dowell equations as the new standard in the field. He attributed his discovery of these equations to a vision from the Lord.

Though he was one of the world’s foremost rotorcraft dynamics experts, Dewey always regarded his relationships with his graduate students as the most important aspect of his life’s work. His students testify that he treated them as equals, cherished them as friends, went out of his way to advance their careers, and mentored them personally and spiritually like a father.

Despite his lifelong intention to continue working full-time well into his 80s, complications from Parkinson’s Disease forced him to withdraw from the labor and service he adored much earlier than expected. Endowed with uncommon fortitude, he nevertheless pushed through pain and infirmity for years, rarely with any complaint, far beyond his body’s ability to keep up with his mind — much like his greatest hero, the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler. He became professor emeritus in May 2020 around his 72nd birthday and continued to guide and collaborate with his remaining graduate students, edit academic journals, and contribute to his beloved fields however he could until his death. His final two students — the last of his 36 Ph.D. and 42 master’s degree graduates — completed their studies in December 2021 while still under his loving care.

Dewey’s countless professional achievements include five books, five book chapters, two U.S. patents, and approximately 230 technical papers in refereed journals. He served on the editorial boards of at least six academic journals and was elected fellow of four professional societies: the American Academy of Mechanics, the American Helicopter Society, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. In recognition of his original and enduring contributions to engineering, he received more than 20 prestigious national and international awards.

A fine tenor with a bright voice and a delight for melody, Dewey also loved to sing and play the piano. Starting as a young boy, he sang in the choir of every church he attended, frequently played piano and organ in worship services, and spent hours on his treasured baby grand nearly every weekend. For years, before putting his youngest son to bed every evening, he’d sit in his reading chair with the boy on his lap and sing hymns to him — always from memory — as the twilight dwindled outside. Later, when Sunday dinners had grown to include his daughters-in-law and grandchildren and frequent guests, he made singing hymns in four-part harmony after the meal a lasting and beloved Hodges tradition.

Over a period of about 40 years, Dewey served as an ordained elder at three churches, and he led dozens, if not scores, of individuals to lasting faith in Christ. He always knew the precise mileage of his last tank of fuel and exactly how much change he had in his pocket. He preferred every glass of water “three-fourths full with two ice cubes,” his favorite television show was Rocky and Bullwinkle, his favorite movie was UHF, and at age 4, he preached the sermon at the funeral for his sister Dorothy’s baby chicken.

He was “Dewey” to his friends, “Dad and Daddy” to his sons, “Papa” to his grandchildren, “Uncle Dewey” to his many nephews and nieces, “Dr. Hodges” and “Professor Hodges” to his students and colleagues, and “Baby” to his wife.

Dewey is preceded in death by his parents, Plummer and Etha Hodges, and his brothers, the Rev. Plummer Hodges Jr. and David Hodges. He is survived by his sister, Dorothy Nolen; his wife of 50 years, Margaret; his five sons, Timothy, Jonathan, David, Philip, and Benjamin; and 28 grandchildren.

Though he was a man of rare and incandescent genius, Dewey’s life was defined far more by his character of utmost excellence, steadfast dedication, fervent enthusiasm, and unimpeachable integrity. While he will be sorely missed, Dewey Harper Hodges — since freed from his years of valiant suffering — now walks with the saints in light.

The author would like to thank David Peters and Robert Ormiston — two of Dewey’s oldest and dearest friends — for their assistance describing some of his father’s scientific contributions.