William Prager

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William Prager , actually (before 1940) Willy Prager (born May 23, 1903 in Karlsruhe ; † March 17, 1980 in Savognin / Zurich ), was a German engineer and mathematician . He is best known for his contributions to the theory of plasticity .

Live and act

Willy Prager studied civil engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt and received his diploma in 1925. In the same year he married his wife Gertrude "Ann" Heyer and received his doctorate in Darmstadt in 1926 with the thesis Contribution to the kinematics of the space frame . After two years as a private lecturer in Darmstadt, he became a private lecturer at the Georg-August University in Göttingen in 1929 , where he came into contact with Ludwig Prandtl . In 1932, Prager was appointed professor for technical mechanics and director of the Institute for Mechanics in Karlsruhe . At that time he was Germany's youngest professor. The reason for his early appointment was his high international reputation, based on his numerous publications and a first book on applied mathematics . However , when Hitler came to power , the native of Prague was ousted from office . Prager did not put up with the treatment by the National Socialists, sued in court against his dismissal and won. He obtained a back payment for the wages he would have received had he been able to exercise the office. He was also allowed to resume his professorship in Germany, which he refused. In 1933, Prague left Germany for Turkey , where he became professor of theoretical mechanics at Istanbul University .

In Turkey he continued his research at the highest level, he published in German, Turkish, French and English. He learned Turkish in two years and wrote textbooks in Turkish for his students on Descriptive Geometry and Elementary Mechanics.

At the request of Alfred Kantorowicz , who was also in exile in Turkey , he also gave statics and trigonometry lessons for students of dentistry in the context of prosthetics.

With the outbreak of World War II and the German advance in 1940, Prager decided to move to the USA , where he had an offer from Brown University . However, the journey proved difficult during this period. He had to take a long detour to finally get to Brown University, where he contacted Otto Neugebauer , whom he still knew from Göttingen. Under Prager, a center for plasticity theory was established at Brown University in the USA. There were, among others, Daniel C. Printer (1918-2001) and Philip G. Hodge employees important. With Drucker, he also applied the theory of plasticity to soil mechanics .

In April 1943, Prager founded the journal "Quarterly of Applied Mathematics" and remained the editor for 20 years until 1965.

In 1963 he left Brown University (where he was later professor emeritus) and became a researcher (resident consultant) at the Zurich research laboratory of IBM . From 1965 he was Professor of Applied Mechanics at the University of California, San Diego . From 1973 he retired to Savognin .

Honors

In 1951, Prager was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , and in 1968 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences . He was also a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Polish and French Academy of Sciences . He received the Timoshenko Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Kármán Medal from the American Society of Civil Engineers . He has received several honorary doctorates ( Liège , Poitiers , Milan , Waterloo / Ontario , Hanover , Brown University (Providence, RI) , Manchester , Brussels and Stuttgart ).

William Prague Medal

The Society of Engineering Science has been issuing a science award for outstanding achievements in theoretical or experimental solid-state mechanics , the William Prager Medal , in memory of William Prager since 1983 .

Fonts

  • with Kurt Hohenemser : Dynamics of Structures. A vibration theory for civil engineers , Springer 1933
  • The extremum principles in the mathematical theory of elasticity and their use in stress analysis , Bulletin University of Washington Engineering Experiment Station, Seattle, 1950 ( Hypercircle Method )
  • with Philip G. Hodge : The theory of perfectly plastic solids , Wiley 1951
  • Problems in the theory of plasticity , Birkhäuser 1954
  • Theory of ideal plastic bodies , Springer 1954
  • An introduction to plasticity , Addison-Wesley 1959
  • Introduction to Continuum Mechanics , Birkhäuser 1961 (lectures at ETH Zurich)
  • Introduction to basic Fortran programming and numerical methods , Blaisdell 1965
  • Introduction to structural optimization , 1974 (lectures in Udine)

literature

  • D. Drucker: William Prager, Memorial Tributes, National Academy of Engineering, Volume 2, Washington DC 1984, pp. 232-235, online
  • George Rozvany: Structural design via optimality criteria: the Prager approach to structural optimization, Springer 1989
  • Karl-Eugen Kurrer : The History of the Theory of Structures. Searching for Equilibrium , Berlin: Ernst & Sohn 2018, p. 1048 (biography), ISBN 978-3-433-03229-9 .
  • RT Shield: William Prager, J. Optimization Theory Applic., Vol. 15, 1975, pp. 5-7
  • PG Hodge: William Prager (1903-1980), Transactions ASME, Ser. E, Volume 47, 1980, pp. 225-226
  • HG Hopkins: William Prager, Int. J. of Mechanical Sciences, Vol. 22, 1980, pp. 393-394
  • Achim Hettler and Karl-Eugen Kurrer: Earth pressure . Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-433-03274-9 , pp. 334-335
  • Alp Eden, Gürol Irzik: German mathematicians in exile in Turkey: Richard von Mises, William Prager, Hilda Geiringer, and their impact on Turkish mathematics , Historia Mathematica, Volume 39, 2012, 432–459, online

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The Encyclopedia Brunoniana names Savognin, the MacTutor Archive Zurich as the place of death.
  2. ↑ William Prager. (No longer available online.) In: Array of Contemporary American Physicists. Archived from the original on January 28, 2016 ; accessed on January 28, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Ali Vicdani Doyum: Alfred Kantorowicz with special reference to his work in İstanbul (A contribution to the history of modern dentistry). Medical dissertation, Würzburg 1985, pp. 148 and 205.
  4. ↑ Drucker, Prager: Soil mechanics and plastic analysis for limit design , Quarterly J. appl. Math., Volume 10, 1953, pp. 157-165, Drucker-Prager yield criterium
  5. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter P. Académie des sciences, accessed on February 6, 2020 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Prager, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German engineer, applied mathematician and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH May 23, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlsruhe
DATE OF DEATH March 17, 1980
Place of death Savognin or Zurich