Amable Liñan

Anecrological note

Dear Meembers of the french Academy of sciences,

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Amable Liñán, on Sunday 8 November 2025, at the age of 91 years. He had been elected Foreign Associate on March 18, 2002, in the Mechanical and Computer Sciences section.

Born in Noceda de Cabrera (León), Spain, in 1934, Amable Liñán died on November 8, 2025. He was an aeronautical engineer, graduating from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) in 1960, and earning the title of "Aeronautical Engineering" from the California Institute of Technology in 1963. He holds a doctorate in engineering from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (1966). Amable Liñán was elected in 2002 as a Foreign Associate in the Mechanical and Computer Sciences Section. He was also a Member of the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences (Spain) and a Foreign Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering in the USA.

Amable Liñán began his career at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniera Aeronáutica y del Espacio (ETSIAE) and became head of the propulsion and aerothermodynamics department. Professor of fluid mechanics, he worked at INTA (Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial) from 1960 to 1976. He was Associate Professor of Mechanics at Yale University, Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, the University of California at San Diego, the National University of Mexico, Visiting Scholar at the Department of Mechanics and Aeronautics at Princeton University, the Center for Turbulence Research at Stanford University.

A great friend of France, Amable Liñán had been on numerous occasions an associate professor at the University of Marseille and the University of Paris 6, Pierre et Marie Curie. He had been a member of NASA's microgravity combustion group, a member of the board of directors of the Von Kármán Institute (Belgium).

His research work in the field of fluid mechanics deals with theoretical issues of heat and mass transfer and focuses mainly on the analysis of combustion phenomena.

An outstanding theorist, he is developing pioneering studies on understanding the fundamental mechanisms that determine the structure of flames and their behavior when subjected to high rates of deformation.
He is also interested in determining the critical conditions for extinction and ignition of diffusion flames, the flame response (in the form of an inverted-S curve) obtained by asymptotic methods based on high activation energies, as well as the analysis of new efficient and less polluting combustion processes, fundamental phenomena linked to the design of advanced diesel engines, and reactive fluid dynamics problems involved in the development of new pre-vaporized lean premix combustors for aeronautical applications. Finally, he addresses more applied issues in the field of supersonic combustion and design methods for hydrazine decomposition thrusters for satellite attitude control.

His research work is presented in numerous articles and in a monograph on fundamental aspects of combustion (written with F.A. Williams of UCSD and published in 1993 by Oxford University Press).

Amable Liñán had received, among other honors, the prestigious Zeldovich Gold Medal from the Combustion Institute, the "Premio Príncipe de Asturias de Investigación Científica y Técnica", and the Miguel-Catalan Prize of the Community of Madrid.

With deep respect and sincere greetings,

The Board of the Academy of Sciences