Dr. William Ko, Aerospace Engineer, Engineering Directorate, Aerostructures Branch, Dryden Flight Research Center

NTB: You still do the watercolors, right?

Dr. Ko: Yes, I still do.

NTB: If you had to choose, would you rather be remembered as a great engineer, or as a great artist?

Dr. Ko: Both. I’d like to be remembered as a scientist, as an inventor, and as a watercolor artist. At this moment, Blatz-Ko is quite famous now, and the Ko Displacement Theory will be another famous accomplishment. I also developed a watercolor mathematical law for watercolor painting.

NTB: Really? Explain that for us.

Dr. Ko: Watercolors are transparent colors. When you paint red first, and after it dries you paint yellow, then you get red, yellow, and orange; you get three colors. If you put one more layer of a different color, you will generate seven colors. So, my equation describes how many colors you can generate.

NTB: So you’ve basically reduced the art – or expanded the art – by explaining it with a mathematical equation?

Dr. Ko: Art is mathematics, and watercolor paper is a fibrous material. If you wet the paper, you have to study the diffusion process of the water, so I also developed a diffusion equation to estimate how fast the water diffuses inside the paper.

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