Certain of Ames’ encouragement and assistance, Dryden decided to work toward his doctorate. In the spring of 1919, he received the Ph.D. degree in applied physics, at 20 the youngest person ever to earn a Johns Hopkins University doctorate. His dissertation, titled “Air Forces on Circular Cylinders,” described the scale effects of air flowing around columns perpendicular to the wind and launched him in the rising field of aerodynamics.

Dryden’s scientific standing rested largely on the theoretical insights, the experiments, and the publications dating from his first six years in his position as Chief of the Aerodynamics Section at the National Bureau of Standards. Later in 1949 he became director of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and then deputy administrator of the NACA’s successor, NASA, in 1958. Very much interested in flight research, he had been responsible for establishing a permanent facility at the location later named in his honor, the NASA Hugh L. Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California.