[2] After her father, Osark, a travelling journalist,[3] was drafted for military service in World War I, the young Irmgard helped the family by becoming a math tutor while studying at a girls' Gymnasium in Hanover.

Several years later, when Osark returned to Hanover he was in poor health and Irmgard continued to work to bring in extra money for the family.

[2] She joined as a junior research engineer and worked closely with Ludwig Prandtl and Albert Betz, two of the leading German aerodynamicists of the time.

Prior to her arrival at the AVA, Prandtl had been unsuccessfully working on solving a differential equation for his lifting-line theory for the spanwise lift distribution of an airplane wing.

[2] The escalation and increasing influence of Nazi policies on academia led to their departure from the AVA and they moved to the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (DVL) in Berlin where Flügge-Lotz (her married name) was a consultant in aerodynamics and flight dynamics and Flügge was appointed Chief of Structures Research.

[2] Although banned from academic positions due to Nazi policies, they were permitted to continue their research activities under the protection of Hermann Göring, who was more concerned with technical expertise than ideological purity.

In the spring of 1944, the destruction of Berlin had progressed so far that Flügge-Lotz and Flügge moved with their departments to the small town Saulgau in the hills of southern Germany.

The French relaunched their aeronautical research activity and were eager to hire German scientists, so in 1947 Flügge-Lotz and Flügge moved with many of their colleagues to Paris to join the Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aerospatiales (ONERA).

[9] The disparity of her status as a Lecturer became more apparent when she was the only female delegate from the United States at the first Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control in Moscow.

[9] Flügge-Lotz retired in 1968 at age 65, but continued to conduct research on satellite control systems, heat transfer, and high-speed vehicle drag.

The citation for her honorary degree stated: Professor Flügge-Lotz has acted in a central role in the development of the aircraft industry in the Western world.

Her contributions have spanned a lifetime during which she demonstrate, in a field dominated by men, the value and quality of a woman's intuitive approach in searching for and discovering solutions to complex engineering problems.

[11] In honor of her contributions, the “Wilhelm Flügge and Irmgard Flügge-Lotz Memorial Award" was established by the Applied Mechanics Division at Stanford University for outstanding graduate students.