Walter Vincenti, professor emeritus of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University, laid the engineering groundwork for flight at the speed of sound and helped develop the more efficient swept-wing airplane design still in use today. Vincenti died in Palo Alto on Oct. 11 of complications from pneumonia. He was 102.

“Walter is probably one of the two greatest human beings I’ve met in my adult life,” said Robert McGinn, professor emeritus of management science and engineering, and a former director of the Stanford Program in Science, Technology and Society. “Besides being a superb scholar, he was a person of great integrity, kindness and support for his junior colleagues. He was someone you could trust wholeheartedly.”