SIGMA GAMMA TAU
Profile of Professor Ammon S. Andes
Sigma Gamma Tau, the National Honor Society in Aerospace
Engineering, honored Professor Ammon S. Andes on January 27, 1976 by deciding to
name the National Award for its Undergraduate Award competition after him. This
honor was bestowed on Professor Andes in recognition of his 12 years of service
to the society as its national executive secretary-treasurer from 1964 to
1976.
Professor Andes received B.S. and M.E. degrees in
Mechanical Engineering from Montana State University and an M.S. in aeronautics
from the California Institute of Technology. He had three years and 19 summers of
engineering experience with aircraft and engineering organizations such as Convair
(General Dynamics), Boeing, McDonnell-Douglas, Westinghouse, General Electric,
Martin, and NASA. He taught at Cal Tech and, for seven years, at Washington State
University before coming to the University of Kansas in 1946. For a period of ten
years, Professor Andes was chairman of the Aerospace Engineering Department at the
University of Kansas. He retired in May 1976. Ammon Andes, professor and chairman
emeritus at KU, passed away on September 28, 1996 in Lexington, Missouri at the
age of 91.
During its 2024 Triennial Convention, Sigma Gamma Tau
decided to rename the National Award after Professor Harry H. Hilton for his
nearly seven decades of service to Sigma Gamma Tau. The National Runner-up Award
was then named after Professor Ammon S. Andes.
