Warner T. Koiter
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Warner Tjardus Koiter (June 16, 1914–September 2, 1997) was an influential mechanical engineer and the Professor of Applied Mechanics at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands from 1949 to 1979.
[edit] Life and Education
Warner Tjardus Koiter was born in Amsterdam. After primary and secondary education he enrolled into Delft University of Technology in 1931, where he graduated with honours as a mechanical engineer in 1936.
After graduation he worked at the Dutch National Aeronautical Research Institute (NLL) in Amsterdam to work on airworthiness checking of aircraft structures. In 1938 he moved to the Government Patent Office and in 1939 he joined the Government Civil Aviation Office.
During the war he worked at NLL on subjects of his own choice. These investigations led to his thesis 'On the Stability of Elastic Equilibrium' and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Delft in November of 1945. The thesis was written in Dutch, since the occupying forces only allowed theses to be written in either German or Dutch. As a consequence its contents became only known to the broad scientific community after an English translation was edited by NASA 15 years later.
In 1949 he was appointed Professor of Applied Mechanics in Delft, where he stayed until his retirement in 1979.
Warner died in Delft.
[edit] Achievements
During his scientific career Koiter made many outstanding contributions to the field of applied mechanics. He is primarily known for his asymptotic theory of initial post-buckling stability. Other contributions are in linear and non-linear thin shell theory, plasticity, elasticity and accompanying mathematics. One of his contributions on the 'best' linear thin shell theory got the title 'All you need is Love'. All in all he published approximately 150 reports and papers.
He was awarded the Von Karman medal by the ASCE and the Timoshenko Medal by the ASME. He obtained honorary doctorates from Universities of Leicester, Glasgow, Bochum, and Ghent.
In 1996 the American Society of Mechanical Engineers instated the Warner T. Koiter medal for achievements in solid mechanics, of which he was awarded the first one in 1997.
