Had His First Flight While In Grad School At The University Of Michigan

The man known as "The Flying Professor" at air shows across the country has Gone West at the age of 85.

Bob Lyjak was a graduate student at the University of Michigan and an instructor in the math department in 1957 when he got his first airplane ride. A neighbor who was a pilot introduced him to Bill Barber, an acrobatic pilot in Ann Arbor who took him up in an open-cockpit biplane.

Lyjak was hooked, and he was inspired to learn not only to fly, but to perform aerobatics.

According to an obituary appearing on the online news site MLive.com, Lyjak flew at air shows all over the country, and in 1965 won the Professional Aerobatic Championship flyin a 1929 Waco Taperwing. Along the way, he became known as "The Flying Professor". Among his original stunts was a maneuver called the "Centrifuge," in which the plane stops at a near-vertical attitude and wiggles its tail a couple of times before resuming flight.

He officially retired from flying in 1999. He was featured in a 1978 documentary "Affair in the Air", which many pilots cite as articulating their own love of flying.

Lyjak passed away at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor Wednesday.

(Image from a video shot at Oshkosh in 1984 and posted on YouTube)

FMI: http://airshow.wikia.com/wiki/Bob_Lyjak