Juan de la Cierva, in full Juan de la Cierva Codorniu (born September 21, 1895, Murcia, Spain—died December 19, 1936, London, England), Spanish aeronautical engineer who invented the autogiro, an aircraft in which lift is provided by a freely rotating rotor and which served as the forerunner of the helicopter.
Although trained as a civil engineer, Cierva became interested in aviation early in his youth. Between 1912 and 1919 he designed and built gliders and airplanes. The crash of his trimotor plane in 1919 led him to develop the autogiro as a more stable form of aircraft. In 1923 at Getafe, Spain, he made his first successful flight in an autogiro, and in 1925 he went to England to continue his work. Cierva-type autogiros were used widely in France, Germany, Japan, and the United States prior to World War II, when they were supplanted by helicopters. Cierva was killed in an airliner crash at the Croydon aerodrome, near London.