Theodore Yaotsu Wu (Chinese: 吴耀祖; pinyin: Wú Yàozǔ; March 20, 1924 – December 16, 2023) was a Chinese-born American engineer.
His father had a degree in economics and finance, his mother graduated from high school and majored in literature, while his grandfather was a Chinese physician.
Wu was involved in the research group headed by Paco Lagerstrom, where they developed further the asymptotic perturbation method pioneered by Ludwig Prandtl.
Wu received his PhD in (1952), subsequently worked as a research fellow at Caltech for three years, and developed interest in water waves and hydrodynamics, due to inspiration from then Qian Xuesen and von Karman.
In 1960, under the influence of G. I. Taylor and James Lighthill, Wu started to work on fish locomotion and bird flight (biofluiddynamics).