Gustave Albin Whitehead born Gustav Albin Weisskopf (January 1 1874 – October 10 1927) was an aviation pioneer who immigrated from Germany to the U.S. where he designed and built early flying machines and engines to power them. In the decades since several non-academic researchers have promoted their belief that Whitehead made controlled powered airplane flights more than two years before the Wright Brothers. These claims have repeatedly been dismissed by mainstream aviation scholars.