Mieczysław G. Bekker

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Mieczysław Gregory Bekker (1905 – 1989) was a Polish engineer and scientist.

He was born in Strzyżów, near Hrubieszow, Poland. He died in Santa Barbara 8 January, 1989. Mieczysław Bekker graduated from Warsaw Technical University in 1929 and worked for the Polish Ministry of Military Affairs (1931-1939) at the Army Research Institute (Wojskowy Instytut Badań Inżynierii) in Warsaw^[1]. There he worked on systems for tracked vehicles to work on uneven ground. In the Invasion of Poland he was in a unit that retreated to Romania and then he was moved to France in 1939. In 1942 he accepted the offer of the Canadian government to move to Ottawa to work in armored vehicle research. He entered the Canadian army in 1943 and reached the rank of lt.colonel. Decommissioned in 1956, he moved to the U.S..

He was assistant professor at the University of Michigan and worked in the Army Vehicle Laboratory in Detroit. In 1961 he joined General Motors to work on the lunar vehicle project.

He was a leading specialist in theory and design of military and off-the-road locomotion vehicles, and an originator of a new engineering discipline called "terramechanics".

Bekker authored the general idea and contributed significantly to the design and construction of the Lunar Roving Vehicle used by missions Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17 on the Moon. He was the author of several patented inventions in the area of off-the-road vehicles, including those for extraterrestrial use.

He wrote many papers and articles, and the book "Theory of Land Locomotion".