* Edmund Laitone; Consultant in Aerodynamics

Edmund Laitone, 85, UC Berkeley expert on aerodynamics and mechanical engineering. Born in San Francisco, Laitone earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s in applied mathematics from UC Berkeley and a doctorate in applied mechanics from Stanford. From 1939 to 1945, he was an aeronautical engineer with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, performing research at Langley and Moffett air fields. Laitone next went to Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, working on supersonic aerodynamics. He joined the Berkeley faculty in 1947. In addition to teaching and research, he chaired sections of the engineering school and had visiting professorships in Moscow, Oxford and Xian, China. Laitone remained a respected consultant to such companies as Hughes Aircraft, Douglas Aircraft, the Ramo-Wooldridge Corp., Lockheed Aircraft and General Motors as well as the federal Office of Naval Research. On Dec. 18 in El Cerrito, Calif.