Weis-Fogh was research assistant to the Danish Nobel Prize–winning physiologist
August Krogh, where he studied the flight mechanism of the
desert locust.[14][15][16]
He pioneered studies of
insect flight with Krogh in a classic paper of 1951.[17] He then spent a year at the Copenhagen Institute of
Neurophysiology.[12]
In 1973 Weis-Fogh devised a mathematical model explaining how extremely small insects such as
thrips and
chalcid wasps such as Encarsia formosa could fly using
clap-and-fling,[29][30] where conventional
steady stateaerodynamics did not apply. These insects gain lift by creating vortices near their wings, at the price of the wear and tear from repeated clapping. The British mathematician Sir
James Lighthill named this the Weis-Fogh mechanism of lift generation.[12][13] Weis-Fogh's 1973 paper Quick Estimates of Flight Fitness in Hovering Animals, Including Novel Mechanisms for Lift Production[29] has been cited over 1000 times.[31]
Awards and honours
The Hanne and Torkel Weis-Fogh fund is named in his honour.[32]
^Weis-Fogh, Torkel (1964). "Biology and Physics of Locust Flight. 8. Lift and Metabolic Rate of Flying Locusts". The Journal of Experimental Biology. 41: 257–71.
PMID14187298.
^Andersen, S. O.; Weis-Fogh, T. (1964). "Resilin. A Rubberlike Protein in Arthropod Cuticle". Advances in Insect Physiology Volume 2. Advances in Insect Physiology. Vol. 2. p. 1.
doi:
10.1016/S0065-2806(08)60071-5.
ISBN9780120242023.
^Weis-Fogh, Torkel; Andersen, S. O. (1970). "New Molecular Model for the Long-range Elasticity of Elastin". Nature. 227 (5259): 718–21.
doi:
10.1038/227718a0.
PMID5432073.
S2CID4201643.
^Routledge, L. M.; Amos, W. B.; Gupta, B. L.; Hall, T. A.; Weis-Fogh, Torkel (1975). "Microprobe measurements of calcium binding in the contractile spasmoneme of a vorticellid". Journal of Cell Science. 19 (1): 195–201.
PMID809455.
^Moreton, R. B.; Echlin, P.; Gupta, B. L.; Hall, T. A.; Weis-Fogh, Torkel (1974). "Preparation of Frozen Hydrated Tissue Sections for X-ray Microanalysis in the Scannning Electron Microscope". Nature. 247 (5436): 113–5.
doi:
10.1038/247113a0.
PMID4587972.
S2CID4204339.