John Argyris

John Hadji Argyris (Greek Ιωάννης Αργύρης; born August 19, 1913 in Volos, Greece, † 2 April 2004 in Stuttgart) was a founder of the Finite Element Method (FEM ) and most recently a professor at the University of Stuttgart in Head of the Institute statics and dynamics of air and space structures.

Curriculum vitae

John Argyris studied civil engineering in Athens and Munich and received his diploma in 1936. At first he was employed at the company Gollnow in Szczecin, where he was instrumental in the construction of high radio masts. His next stops were in Berlin and Zurich. Then he went in 1943 in the research department of the Royal Aeronautical Society in England. From 1949 he was professor of aerospace structures at Imperial College, London University, where in 1955 he got a newly established chair. In 1959 Argyris Professor at the Technical University in Stuttgart (now University of Stuttgart), where he founded the Institute for Statics and Dynamics of air and space structures.

Scientific work

Argyris has been involved in the 1950s alongside Ray W. Clough and Olgierd C. Zienkiewicz and after the early mathematical work done by Richard Courant instrumental in the development of the finite element method, it has largely co-founded as a calculation method and provided valuable pioneering work in this area, but also in the field of aviation and space technology.

With the then-new FE method first strength calculations were carried out by aircraft wings and fuselages. The problems of elasticity theory were worked not just with differential equations, but numerical methods. Condition for solving the equation systems was the application of computers.

Under his management, the Institute for Statics and Dynamics of air and space structures (ISD ) of the University of Stuttgart in the years 1965 to 1985 the program system ASKA (Automatic System for Kinematic Analysis), in addition to NASTRAN one of the first general-purpose programs for calculations the finite element method was.

Honors

In 1985 he received the Grand Cross of Merit, and in 1990, the Great Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany.

For his scientific work John Argyris has received numerous awards, including the Medal of Merit of the State of Baden -Württemberg, the Royal Medal of the British Queen and the Royal Society in London (1995) and of the Royal Academy of Engineering in London, the Prince Philip Gold Medal, the highest award of the engineering sciences in the UK (1997). Argyris is the winner of the Timoshenko Medal of the year 1981.