Learning Center Our Enshrinees

Leonard Michael Greene

• Earned a B.S. and M.S. in Civil Engineering and went to work for Grumman Aircraft Corporation. There he witnessed an accident that profoundly affected the trajectory of his life. He analyzed the incident and realized that the type of accident occurred when a pilot was unable to tell when the angle of airflow over a wing became excessive, causing the aircraft to stall and spin out of control. The stall-and-spin was a leading cause of aviation deaths at the time. Greene began working on a device that could warn pilots about stalls before they caused an aircraft to enter a spin. The resulting stall-warning device provided him the first of 60 aviation technology patents he gained throughout his career. 
• His Stall-Warning Indicator won the Flight Safety Foundation’s first Air Safety Award, and this system is now found in most aircraft worldwide.
• Founded the Safe Flight Instrument Corporation in 1946. Greene was soon producing additional flight safety devices, including the Wind-Shear Warning System and the automatic throttle system.
• Co-Founded the Corporate Angel Network, which utilizes empty seats on corporate planes to transport cancer patients to and from hospitals free of charge.
• Founded the Institute for Socioeconomic Studies, a research institute focused on Greene’s ideas surrounding welfare and health care reform; Greene cared deeply about America’s societal issues and wished to eradicate poverty in the United States.
• Author of several articles and books, including Free Enterprise Without Poverty (1981) and Inventorship: The Art of Innovation (2001).
• Received many awards including the 1976 Flight Safety Foundation Award for Meritorious Service and the 1999 Allied Signal/Bendix Trophy for Aviation Safety.