Stephen Timoshenko

Stepan Prokopowytsch Tymoshenko (Ukrainian Степан Прокопович Тимошенко, scientific transliteration Stepan Prokopovyč Tymošenko, English transcription Stephen Timoshenko, born December 23, 1878 in Schpotiwka in Poltava, Ukraine, Russian Empire, † May 29, 1972 in Wuppertal- Elberfeld ) was a pioneer of applied Mechanics ( applied Mechanics ).

After studying engineering ( 1896-1901 in Saint Petersburg and from 1904 to 1906 at the University of Göttingen), a two-year military service in 1901 /02 and a lectureship in Saint Petersburg ( 1903/ 04 at the Polytechnic Institute ), he worked from 1906 to 1911 as a professor at the construction engineering Faculty of the Polytechnic Institute in Kiev. He was released there for political reasons. Then he took in 1913 at the Polytechnic Institute of St. Petersburg, the place of Alexei Nikolaevich Krylov a ( professor of engineering mechanics ). In 1916 he became a professor at the Polytechnic Institute in Kiev and founder ( and also director ) of the Research Institute of Mechanics of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, which had been rebuilt. He taught a short time in Zagreb (1921-1922) and then went to the USA. He worked here first at Westinghouse and then became a professor at the University of Michigan (1928-1935), then from 1936 at Stanford University ( in San Francisco), with a wide field of action. In 1944 he became Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. In 1947 he received the James Watt Medal.

Tymoshenko wrote memoirs in which he Tsar and describes the structure of the sciences in the German Empire, the USSR and the USA, in his experience, as a physicist in the "age of extremes" ( Hobsbawm ). The book is a rare example of autobiographies of an engineering scientist, a personality in whose lives Technology and History Association closely.

Tymoshenko is known for work in the theory of elasticity and developed, among other equations in the beam theory. He also dealt with the history of the theory of elasticity.

In 1964 he moved to Wuppertal, where he died in 1972. His remains were buried in Palo Alto.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME ) awards a prestigious prize, the Timoshenko Medal annually.