It Was The Birds

According to Zvi Yaakov Zwiebel, who happened to be Virginia Tech’s Chabad student center rabbi, “He [Librescu] was always fascinated about how the birds flew in and out of the ghetto, and that’s what motivated him to get in the aerospace field. He loved this idea of freedom, whether it’s freedom of religion or freedom of intellect.”

Becoming An Aeronautical Engineer

Eventually, as Nazi Germany fell, Librescu luckily survived and was able to go back to school in Communist Romania. He took up Aerospace Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, graduating in 1952, but Librescu wasn’t done. After completing his Master’s Degree, he studied further in the Academia de Științe din România until he accomplished a Ph.D. in 1969 in Fluid Mechanics.