Walter Wittke (engineer)

Walter Wittke (born March 28, 1934 in Hamburg ) is a German civil engineer specializing in geotechnics and especially rock mechanics. He is a professor emeritus at RWTH Aachen University .

Life

Wittke studied civil engineering at the Leibniz University of Hanover (basic engineering and especially dam construction with Alfred Streck ), where he studied from 1954 and obtained his diploma in 1959. Then he went to the University of Karlsruhe , where he received his doctorate in 1963 under Hans Leussink on the shear resistance of cohesionless soils. As a post-doctoral student he was at the University of California, Berkeley and then at the US Bureau of Reclamation in Denver . In 1965, after completing his habilitation (with Leopold Müller ), he became a lecturer in soil and rock mechanics at the University of Karlsruhe and in 1970 an extraordinary professor. From 1974 he was a professor at RWTH Aachen University (as successor to Edgar Schultze ). He has given guest lectures at Northwestern University , the Institute of Technology in Madras and Purdue University, among others .

Wittke is considered a leading scientist in rock mechanics in Germany, about which he wrote a standard German work. He headed several national and international conferences on rock mechanics, such as the 7th International Congress of the ISRM (International Society for Rock Mechanics) in 1991 in Aachen. He was also chairman of the German section of the ISRM. In 1980 he founded his own engineering office, Prof. Wittke Consulting Engineers for Foundation Engineering and Rock Construction (WBI) in Aachen.

From 1990 to 2002 he was a board member of DGGT . In 1977 he received the Rock Mechanics Award from the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineering, in 1983 the Rupert Myers Award in Material Engineering from the University of Sydney and since 1988 he has been a corresponding member of the Argentine Academy of Sciences. In 1999 he retired and he received an honorary doctorate from the Leibniz University in Hanover . In 2012 he moved with his family and his company from Aachen to Weinheim .

Works

• Rock mechanics: Basics for economical building in rock, Springer Verlag 1984
• Tunnel statics, Essen, Verlag Glückauf 1999 (English edition 2000)

literature

• Wittke (editor) Festschrift on the occasion of the 60th birthday of Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. W. Wittke , Publications of the Institute for Foundation Engineering, Soil Mechanics, Rock Mechanics and Hydraulic Engineering of RWTH Aachen University, No. 26, 1994 (with list of publications)
• Wittke (editor): 20 years of WBI: Lectures of the seminar on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of WBI GmbH, June 22, 2001, Aachen , Glückauf Verlag, Essen 2001

Web links

• Literature by and about Walter Wittke in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage of his engineering office WBI