Thomas Reif Kane, former associate professor of mechanical engineering in Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, and a pioneer in the field of spacecraft dynamics, biomechanics and modern computational dynamics died in California on February 16. He was 94.

Dr. Kane was born in Vienna, Austria. He immigrated to the US with his parents in 1938 after the fall of Austria to the Nazis. In 1943, he enlisted in the US Army and was stationed in the South Pacific as a combat photographer. In a photograph of the official Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri taken for the Saturday Evening Post, Dr. Kane can be seen kneeling in the background with his camera in hand.

Supported by the GI Bill, Dr. Kane went to Columbia University from 1946 to 1953, earning two BS degrees (mathematics and civil engineering), an MS in civil engineering and a PhD in applied mechanics.

Dr. Kane joined the engineering faculty at the University of Pennsylvania as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering in 1953. He was promoted to associate professor in 1956. During his time at Penn, he also served as a research engineer and on the Committee Investigating the Question of Sabbatical Leave.

The field of dynamics involves trying to describe and predict the behavior of physical systems with many moving parts through mathematical equations. Early in his career, Dr. Kane concluded that traditional approaches to writing these equations relied too much on vague concepts. So he developed an alternative that colleagues said was much more efficient and logical, now called Kane’s Method. He began teaching Kane’s Method in 1955 while at Penn and it lives on in software for vehicles, spacecraft, robotics, biomechanics and many other mechanical and aerospace technologies.

He left Penn in 1961 for a position at Stanford, where he eventually became professor emeritus of applied mechanics and mechanical engineering. Dr. Kane also taught in England, Brazil and China in temporary positions and spent three months in the Soviet Union in 1968 as part of an exchange program between the Russian and American academies of science.

Dr. Kane contributed to theory and techniques that helped astronauts control their orientation in space without exhausting themselves or requiring assistive devices. Part of this research, featured in Life magazine, involved studying the free-falling motion of cats and enlisting a trampolinist to practice in-air movements in a spacesuit. On one occasion, Dr. Kane acted in his own demonstration, twisting just-so atop a frictionless table to spin it 180-degrees. His about-face convinced officials from NASA of his ability to explain these complex movements with math.

Dr. Kane co-authored 10 textbooks and over 170 technical articles. He was a fellow of the American Astronautical Society and an Honorary Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). When he won the American Astronautical Society’s Dirk Brouwer Award in 1983, the nomination stated, “If you asked any recognized group of experts in the area of space flight mechanics to pick the 10 best people in their field, Professor Kane’s name would undoubtedly appear on every list.” Dr. Kane was also the inaugural recipient in 2005 of the ASME D’Alembert Award, recognizing lifetime achievement and contribution to the field of multibody systems dynamics.

Dr. Kane is survived by his wife, Ann; his daughter, Linda; and his granddaughter, Elisabeth.