Richard Skalak

Richard Skalak (born February 5, 1923 in New York City , † August 17, 1997 in San Diego ) was an American engineer for biomedical technology and bioengineer. He was a professor at Columbia University .

Life

Skalak graduated from Columbia University with a bachelor's degree (BA) in 1943 and a master's degree in civil engineering in 1946 and received his doctorate in civil engineering in 1954. In 1954 he became Assistant Professor, 1964 Professor and 1977 James Kip Finch Professor of Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University. From 1978 to 1987 he was director of the Bioengineering Institute there, and in 1988 he retired.

Skalak studied blood flow and mechanical behavior of blood cells in the body, the growth of bones and tissue and the migration of white blood cells in tissue during infections. He developed titanium implants for dentures and he studied the reaction of human bone substance to titanium.

In 1987 he received the Von Karman Medal . The annual Richard Skalak Colloquium in Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University and the Richard Skalak Award from ASME are named after him. He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering (1988) and a Fellow of ASCE, ASME, the American Academy of Mechanics, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the New York Academy of Medicine .

He was married and had two sons and two daughters. Most recently he lived in San Diego.

Fonts

• with PI Branemark: Deformation of Red Blood Cells in Capillaries . In: Science , Volume 164, 1969, pp. 717-719, PMID 5778020 .
• with Shu Chien (Ed.): Handbook of Bioengineering . McGraw Hill, 1987
• with Evan A. Evans: Mechanics and thermodynamics of biomembranes . CRC Press, 1980
• with C. Fred Fox (Ed.): Tissue engineering . Liss, New York 1988 (Workshop, Lake Tahoe 1988)

Web links

• Obituary at Columbia University