Nicholas J. Hoff

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Nicholas John Hoff (born January 3, 1906 in Magyarovar , † August 4, 1997 in Stanford (California) ) was a Hungarian-American engineer for aircraft construction and astronautics. He was a professor at Stanford University .

Life

Hoff went to the Lutheran grammar school in Budapest and played the violin in the school orchestra with Antal Doráti . He then studied at the ETH Zurich with Aurel Stodola, among others, with a degree as an engineer in 1928. He then worked as an engineer at the Manfred Weiss aircraft and engine works in Budapest. In 1938 he went to Stanford to do his doctorate with Stephen Timoshenko . After the war prevented a return to Hungary, he worked in the vibration and earthquake laboratory in Stanford, where he helped Lydik Jacobsen with his experiments on the earthquake behavior of buildings. In 1940 he left Stanford and became an aircraft engineering instructor at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn . In 1942 he received his doctorate at Stanford ( Stresses in a space curved bar reinforcing the edge of a cut-out in a monocoque fuselage ). In 1946 he was given a full professorship at the Polytechnic Institute and in 1950 he became head of the Faculty of Aircraft Engineering and Applied Mechanics. In 1957 he returned to Stanford to build up the newly spun off faculty for aircraft engineering (from 1962 the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics). The appointment was made in particular on the recommendation of Theodore von Kármán . In 1971 he retired.

He was visiting professor at Monash University (1971), the Georgia Institute of Technology (1973), ETH Zurich (1975), at the Cranfield Institute of Technology (1974/75) and from 1976 to 1981 at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as well as in Japan, for which he learned Japanese.

He was a pioneer in the stability analysis of the thin metal shell structures of aircraft. He investigated the stability of monocoque structures in aircraft construction, the effects of heating the aircraft during supersonic flight and the buckling of the aluminum sandwich structures used in aircraft construction.

In 1967 he received the Worcester-Reed-Warner Medal of the ASCE, in 1972 the Von Karman Medal , in 1983 the Daniel Guggenheim Medal and in 1974 the ASME Medal. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (since 1968), the National Academy of Engineering and, since 1989, an external member of the Académie des sciences . In 1953 he gave the Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London.

In 1968 he was President of the 12th International Congress of Applied Mechanics in Stanford.

He was married to Vivian Church from 1940 until her death in 1962 and married Ruth Kleczewski in 1972.

Fonts

  • The Analysis of Structures, based on the minimal principles and the principle of virtual displacements, Wiley 1956
  • Editor: High temperature effects in aircraft structures, Pergamon Press 1958

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter H. Académie des sciences, accessed on November 27, 2019 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Hoff, Nicholas J.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hoff, Nicholas John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American engineer
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Magyarovar
DATE OF DEATH 4th August 1997
Place of death Stanford (California)