Jan Burgers

Johannes Martinus Burgers, with callsign " Jan", ( born January 13, 1895 in Arnhem, The Netherlands, † June 7, 1981 in Washington, DC, United States) was a Dutch physicist. He was brother of the physicist and crystallographer Willie Gerard Burgers.

His main areas of work were fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, continuum mechanics and theory of materials. On Burgers go from applied mathematics, the so-called Burgers equation and the associated Burgers turbulence models of fluid mechanics back; are further due to him regarding the theory of dislocations and the Burgers vector with respect to the Burgers viscoelasticity material.

Life

He studied physics in Leiden under the care of Paul Ehrenfest, in which he received his doctorate. After completing his doctorate in 1918 he was 23 years old, appointed professor at the Technical University of Delft. There he had the opportunity to teach and to devote himself to extensively research. In 1939, Burgers managed a fundamental work on the theory of Gleitebenenversetzungen in crystalline solids. The occurring therein, the transfer process descriptive vector is named after him Burgers vector.

In 1946 he was co-founder of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics ( IUTAM ), the first Secretary General, he was. He held from 1946 to 1952 this office.

1955 emigrated Burgers in the United States, where he accepted a post at the University of Maryland, which he held until his retirement.

In 1974 he was awarded the Otto Laporte Award.

Works and writings

• Some considerations on the fields of stress connected with dislocations in a regular crystal lattice. Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, afdeling Natuurkunde: Proceedings of the Section of Sciences, ISSN 0370-0348, Vol 42, 1939, p.293 -325, 378-399.
• Mathematical examples Illustrating relations Occurring in the theory of turbulent fluid motion. Verhandelingen Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afdeeling Natuurkunde, Series 1, ISSN 0373-4668, Vol 17, H. 2, 1939, pp. 1-53

Post mortem published