Stephen Timoshenko

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Stephen Timoshenko
Stephen Timoshenko

Stephen P. Timoshenko or Stepan Prokofyevich Timoshenko (Ukrainian: Степан Тимошенко, Russian: Степан Прокофьевич Тимошенко, December 23, 1878 – May 29, 1972), is reputed to be the father of modern engineering mechanics. He wrote many of the seminal works in the areas of engineering mechanics, elasticity and strength of materials, many of which are still widely used today.

Timoshenko was born in the village of Shpotivka in Poltava Gubernia (currently in Chernihiv Oblast, Ukraine and part of Russia at the time). He studied at a "real school" in Romny , Kharkov Gubernia (now in Sumy Oblast) from 1889 to 1896. In Romny his schoolmate and friend was future famous physicist Abram Ioffe. He continued his education towards a university degree at the St Petersburg Institute of the Railways. After graduating in 1901, he stayed on teaching in this same institution from 1901 to 1903 and then worked at the Saint Petersburg Polytechnical Institute under Viktor Kirpichyov 1903 - 1906. In 1905 he was sent for one year to the University of Göttingen where he worked under Ludwig Prandtl.

From 1907 to 1911 he was a professor at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, where he did research in the earlier variant of the Finite Element Method of elastic calculations, the so called Rayleigh method. During those years he also pioneered work on Buckling, and published the first variant of his famous Strength of materials textbook.

In 1911 he signed a protest against Minister for Education Kasso and was fired from the Kiev Polytechnic Institute. In 1911 he was awarded the Zhukovsky prize of the Russian Academy of Science that helped him survive after losing his job. He went to St Petersburg where he worked as a lecturer and then a Professor in the Electrotechnical Instute and the St Petersburg Institute of the Railways (1911 - 1917). During that time he developed the theory of elasticity and the theory of beam deflection, and continued to study buckling. In 1918 he returned to Kiev and assisted Vladimir Vernadsky in establishing of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences - the oldest academy among the Soviet republics other than Russia.

After Denikin troops had taken Kiev in 1919, the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences was closed and Timoshenko lost his job. In 1920, after the Bolshevik takeover of Kiev, Timoshenko emigrated to Yugoslavia, where he held professorship at the Zagreb Polytechnic Institute. He is remembered for delivering lectures in Russian while using as many words in Croatian as he could; the students were able to understand him well.

In 1922 Timoshenko moved to the United States where he worked for the Westinghouse Electric Corporation from 1923 to 1927, when he became a faculty professor in the University of Michigan where he created the first bachelor's and doctoral programs in engineering mechanics. His textbooks have been published in 36 languages. His first textbooks and papers were written in Russian; later in his life, he published mostly in English.

Since 1936 he was a professor at Stanford University. In 1964 he moved to Wuppertal Western Germany.

In 1957 ASME established a medal named after Stephen Timoshenko; he became its first recipient. Timoshenko Medal honors Stephen P. Timoshenko as the world-renowned authority in the field of mechanical engineering and it commemorates his contributions as author and teacher. Timoshenko Medal is given annually for distinguished contributions in applied mechanics.

In addition to his textbooks, Timoshenko wrote two other books, Engineering Education in Russia and As I Remember, the latter an autobiography first published in Russian in 1963 with its English translation to appear in 1968.

He died in 1972, his ashes are buried in Palo Alto, California.

Contents

[edit] Publications

  • Vibration Problems in Engineering, D. Van Nostrand Company, 1928
  • Strength of Materials, 3rd edition, Krieger Publishing Company, 1976, ISBN 0-88275-420-3
  • Theory of Elastic Stability, with J. M. Gere, 2nd edition, McGraw-Hill, 1961
  • Theory of Plates and Shells , with S. Woinosky-Krieger, 2nd edition, McGraw-Hill, 1969
  • Theory of Elasticity , with J. N. Goodier, 3rd edition, McGraw Hill, 1970
  • Mechanics of Materials , with J. M. Gere, 1st edition, D. Van Nostrand Company, 1972
  • Theory of Structures, with D.H. Young, 2nd edition, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1965
  • Engineering Mechanics, with D.H. Young, 4th edition, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1983

[edit] List of Timoshenko's doctoral students in the U.S.A.

University of Michigan:

  • Coates, W. M., (1929)
  • Donnell, L. H., (1930)
  • Billevicz, V., (1931)
  • Everett, F. L., (1931)
  • Frocht, M. M., (1931)
  • Goodier, J. N., (1931)
  • Brandeberry, J. B., (1932)
  • MacCullough, G. H., (1932)
  • Jamieson, J., (1933)
  • Taylor, W. H., (1933)
  • Verse, G. L., (1933)
  • Vesselowsky, S. T., (1933)
  • Weibel, E. E., (1933)
  • Jakkula, A. A., (1934)
  • Maugh, L. C., (1934)
  • Schoonover, R. H., (1934)
  • Way, S., (1934)
  • Wojtaszak, I. A., (1934)
  • Allan, G. W. C., (1935)
  • Horger, O. J., (1935)
  • Maulbetsch, J. L., (1935)
  • Miles, A. J., (1935)
  • Young, D. H., (1935)
  • Anderson, C. G., (1936)
  • Fox, E. N., (1936)
  • Hetenyi, M. I., (1936)
  • Hogan, M. B., (1936)
  • Marin, J., (1936)
  • Zahorski, A. T., (1937)

Stanford University:

  • Bergman, E. O., (1938)
  • Kurzweil, A. C., (1940)
  • Lee, E. H., (1940)
  • Huang, Y. S., (1941)
  • Wang, T. K., (1941)
  • Weber, H. S., (1941)
  • Hoff, N. J., (1942)
  • Popov, E. P., (1946)
  • Chilton, E. G., (1947)

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  • Stephen P. Timoshenko (1968). As I Remember; The Autobiography of Stephen P. Timoshenko. Princeton, Van Nostrand.
  • C. Richard Soderberg (1982). Stephen P. Timoshenko, 1878-1972: A biographical memoir. The National Academies Press (National Academy of Sciences).
  • Biographical Memoirs about Stephen P. Timoshenko (machine-read extracts). The National Academies Press (National Academy of Sciences)
  • E. H. Mansfield and D. H. Young, "Stephen P. Timoshenko," in:. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. vol. 19 (London: The Royal Society, 1973) pp. 679-94.
  • Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 19 (1993). Stephen Timoshenko. Toronto: University of Toronto.
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