Robert T. Jones, (May 28, 1910 – August 11, 1999), was an aerodynamicist and aeronautical engineer for NACA and later NASA. He was known at NASA as "one of the premier aeronautical engineers of the twentieth century". The papers of Robert T. Jones are in the Stanford University Libraries archives. Early experience Jones grew up in the American Midwest farming community of Macon, Missouri. Fascinated by airplanes, he attended Macon High School, built model airplanes from kits and scale drawings, and read aviation magazines and National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) technical reports. He attended the University of Missouri for one year, but dropped out to join the Marie Meyer Flying Circus. There he took flying lessons in return for doing engineering maintenance, as he described it, "carrying gas and patching wing tips". In 1929, engineer Walter Barling left the Nicholas-Beazley Airplane Company. Stunt-pilot Charley Fower recommended Jones to the company as someone who “knew everything there was to know about airplanes.” Until the company added English engineer Thomas Kirkup to the team, Jones was their sole engineer. From Kirkup, Jones learned about airplane design and stress analysis. Jones developed the Pobjoy Special air racer, but because of the depression the company was forced to shut down. With the help of his local congressman, Jones found work as an elevator operator in the House Office Building in Washington, D.C. He spent his spare time studying at the Library of Congress, where he met Albert Francis Zahm, chief of the Aeronautical Division of the U.S. Library. At Zahm's recommendation, Jones tutored Maryland congressman David John Lewis (also self-educated) in mathematics. Jones also met Max Munk, who encouraged hiim to take a graduate-level course in aerodynamics that Munk taught in the evening at Catholic University. Research In 1934, President Roosevelt's public works program offered short-term positions for scientific aids at NACA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Jones obtained one of the positions, with recommendations from Zahm, Munk, and Lewis. At the end of the first nine month position, he was rehired through temporary reappointments. A permanent appointment at the initial civil-service level for an Engineer seemed impossible because it required a Bachelor's degree. However, the next higher professional grade did not state that requirement. In 1936 Jones was promoted directly to second level engineer. In January 1945, Jones developed a theory of the delta wing based on thin-airfoil theory. Others at