Igor Sikorsky

By 1913, Sikorsky had built and flown the Russky Vityaz, the world's first successful four-engine aircraft, and at twenty-four was one of the most celebrated engineers in Imperial Russia. The Revolution ended that. He left for France, then for New York in 1919 with almost nothing. After teaching mathematics to fellow émigrés on Long Island, he founded the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation in 1923 with capital raised among Russian exiles, including the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. Sikorsky's flying boats carried Pan American across the Pacific in the 1930s. His real breakthrough came in 1939 with the VS-300, the first practical single-rotor helicopter, and in 1942 with the Sikorsky R-4, the first mass-produced helicopter in the world. Sikorsky Aircraft remains the company's name today.