Erwin Stein (engineer)

Erwin Stein explains the binary four-species gear machine according to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Erwin Stein (born July 5, 1931 in Altendiez ; † December 19, 2018 in Hanover ) was a German professor of technical mechanics at the Leibniz University of Hanover .

Life

Stein went to school in Limburg (Lahn) and from 1951 studied civil engineering (and mathematics) at the TH Darmstadt . After graduating in 1958, he worked as a structural engineer in an engineering office (H. Homberg) in Hagen , where, among other things, he calculated a prestressed concrete motorway bridge. From 1959 he was an assistant at the University of Stuttgart , where he received his doctorate in 1964 ( The Trefftz method for beams, plates and shells ) and qualified as a professor in 1969 ( coupling of finite elements and extended Trefftz method for plates and shells with edge defects ). 1969 to 1971 he was the spokesman for the special research area of the DFG light surface structures . Since 1971 he has been a full professor for building mechanics and after renaming the chair in 1978 for building mechanics and numerical mechanics at the University of Hanover and director of the institute of the same name. In 1998 he retired. From 1972 to 1999 he was also a test engineer for structural engineering in Lower Saxony. From 1978 to 1981 he was dean of the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Surveying. In 1986 he was visiting scholar at the University of Maryland (College Park) and the University of California, Berkeley . From 1992 to 1999 he was the spokesperson for the DFG research project Adaptive Finite Element Methods in Applied Mechanics , which he initiated.

Stein was considered an international authority in numerical mechanics. He published over 375 papers and had 72 doctoral students. 24 of his students became professors.

Franz Otto Kopp demonstrates the Hanoverian 2005 model of the Leibniz four-species calculating machine

Stein also became known for his work on the technical inventions of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , in particular his four-species calculating machine , which he designed in various versions and extensions together with Franz Otto Kopp and Karl Popp . Stein was a member of the Leibniz Society and organized several exhibitions about Leibniz.

Since 1989 he has been a member of the Braunschweig Scientific Society, since 1995 a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and since 1999 of the Slovak Academy of Engineering. From 1989 to 1995 he was a member of the board of the Society for Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (GAMM) and co-editor of its announcements. 2008 inspired stone the reasoning of the Section history of mechanics in the GAMM, whose contributions to conferences in Karlsruhe (2010), Graz (2011) and Darmstadt (2012) in the first volume of the Springer-Verlag edited series Lecture Notes in Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (LAMM) have been published. In addition, he was co-editor of several journals for numerical mechanics. From 1997 to 2004 he was chairman of the European Committee for Computational Mechanics. In 1993 he received the Max Planck Research Award . He has received multiple honorary doctorates (Stuttgart, Saint Petersburg, Chinese State University of Mining and Technology in Xuzhou and Beijing, Poznan). In 1998 he received the Gauß-Newton Medal of the International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM), which he co-founded in 1985, has been on the board of directors since 1994 and has been an honorary member since 2002. In 2005 he received the von Kaven Prize of the German Research Foundation and in 2009 the Zienkiewicz Medal of the Polish Association for Computational Mechanics. In 2011 he received the Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Lower Saxony Order of Merit and in 2012 the Ritz-Galerkin Medal of the ECCOMAS (European Community for Computational Methods in Applied Science).

From 1985 to 2004 he was co-editor of the civil engineer magazine, responsible for numerical mechanics and computer science. From 1987 to 1997 he was on the board of Dekomech (German Committee for Mechanics) and from 1990 to 1996 its secretary.

In 1953 he married Gisela Nink, with whom he has two daughters and a son.

Fonts (selection)

Erwin Stein, Franz-Otto Kopp: Construction and theory of the Leibniz calculating machines in the context of the forerunners, further developments and replicas. With an overview of the history of number systems and computing aids , Studia Leibnitiana, Franz Steiner Verlag, Volume 42, Issue 1, 2010, pp. 1–128
Editor with René de Borst , Thomas JR Hughes : Encyclopedia of Computational Mechanics , 3 volumes, Wiley 2004
Editor: Adaptive finite elements in linear and nonlinear solid and structural mechanics , Springer-Verlag 2005
Editor with Ekkehard Ramm: Error-controlled adaptive finite elements methods in solid mechanics , John Wiley & Sons 2003
with Peter Wriggers, Udo Meißner (editor): FEM in der Baupraxis , Ernst and Son 1998 (FEM 98 conference at TU Darmstadt)
with Walter Wunderlich (editor): Finite Elements - Applications in Building Practice , Ernst & Sohn 1988 (Ruhr University Bochum Conference 1988)
Editor: Finite element and boundary element techniques from mathematical and engineering point of view , Springer-Verlag 1988
with Karl Popp: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: the work of the great universal scholar as a philosopher, mathematician, physicist, technician: pictures and texts for the Leibniz exhibition 2000 , Wiley-VCH 2000
Ariane Walsdorf, Klaus Badur, Erwin Stein, Franz Otto Kopp: The last original. The Leibniz calculating machine of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library (= treasury , vol. 1), ed. from the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library, Hanover: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library, 2014, ISBN 978-3-943922-08-0

Web links

Commons : Erwin Stein - collection of images, videos and audio files

Literature by and about Erwin Stein in the catalog of the German National Library
Website at the University of Hanover

Individual evidence

^ International Association of Computational Mechanics (IACM): Erwin Stein abbreviated obituary in the IACM News of December 19, 2018, written by Antonio Huerta (accessed December 20, 2018).
↑ Hans Wußing, 6000 Years of Mathematics, Volume 1, Springer-Verlag 2008, p. 425
↑ Erwin Stein (Ed.): The History of Theoretical, Material and Computational / Mechanics - Mathematics meets Mechanics and Engineering , Springer-Verlag 2014, ISBN 978-3-642-39904-6 . (Review by Karl-Eugen Kurrer , In: Beton- und Stahlbetonbau , 107th year (2014), no. 5, pp. 371–372).

personal data
SURNAME	Stein, Erwin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German engineer
DATE OF BIRTH	July 5, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH	Altendiez
DATE OF DEATH	19th December 2018
Place of death	Hanover

[1] International Association of Computational Mechanics (IACM): Erwin Stein abbreviated obituary in the IACM News of December 19, 2018, written by Antonio Huerta (accessed December 20, 2018).

[2] Hans Wußing, 6000 Years of Mathematics, Volume 1, Springer-Verlag 2008, p. 425

[3] Erwin Stein (Ed.): The History of Theoretical, Material and Computational / Mechanics - Mathematics meets Mechanics and Engineering , Springer-Verlag 2014, ISBN 978-3-642-39904-6 . (Review by Karl-Eugen Kurrer , In: Beton- und Stahlbetonbau , 107th year (2014), no. 5, pp. 371–372).