Stephen Timoshenko | |
|---|---|
Степан Тимошенко | |
 Timoshenko, c. 1918 | |
| Born | Stepan Prokopovych Tymoshenko December 22 [O.S. December 10] 1878 Shpotovka,Chernigov Governorate,Russian Empire |
| Died | May 29, 1972(1972-05-29) (aged 93) |
| Nationality | Russian Empire, thenUnited States after about 1927 |
| Alma mater | Petersburg State Transport University |
| Known for | Timoshenko beam theory |
| Awards | Louis E. Levy Medal(1944) Timoshenko Medal(1957) Elliott Cresson Medal(1958) Fellow of the Royal Society[1] |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Engineering Mechanics |
| Institutions | Kiev Polytechnic Institute,Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University,University of Michigan,Stanford University |
| Doctoral students | |
Stepan Prokopovich Timoshenko[3] (Ukrainian:Степан Прокопович Тимошенко,romanized: Stepan Prokopovych Tymoshenko,Ukrainian pronunciation:[steˈpanproˈkɔpoʋet͡ʃtɪmoˈʃɛnko];Russian:Степан Прокофьевич Тимошенко,romanized: Stepan Prokofyevich Timoshenko,[sʲtʲɪˈpanprɐˈkofʲjɪvʲɪtɕtʲɪmɐˈʂɛnkə]; December 22 [O.S. December 10] 1878 – May 29, 1972), later known asStephen Timoshenko, was a Ukrainian[4][5][6][7] and later an American[8]engineer and academician.
He is considered to be the father of modernengineering mechanics. An inventor and one of the pioneering mechanical engineers at theSt. Petersburg Polytechnic University. A founding member of theUkrainian Academy of Sciences, Timoshenko wrote seminal works in the areas ofengineering mechanics,elasticity andstrength of materials, many of which are still widely used today. Having started his scientific career in theRussian Empire, Timoshenko emigrated to theKingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes during theRussian Civil War and then to theUnited States.[1][9][10][11][12][13][14]
Timoshenko was born in the village ofShpotovka,Uyezd of Konotop in theChernigov Governorate which at that time was a territory of theRussian Empire (today inKonotop Raion,Sumy Oblast ofUkraine). He was ethnically Ukrainian.[15]
He studied at aRealschule (Russian:реальное училище) inRomny,Poltava Governorate (now inSumy Oblast) from 1889 to 1896. In Romny his schoolmate and friend was future famous semiconductor physicistAbram Ioffe. Timoshenko continued his education towards a university degree at theSt. Petersburg State Transport University. After graduating in 1901, he stayed on teaching in this same institution from 1901 to 1903 and then worked at theSaint Petersburg Polytechnical Institute underViktor Kirpichov 1903–1906. In 1905, he was sent for one year to theUniversity of Göttingen where he worked underLudwig Prandtl.
In the fall of 1906, he was appointed to the Chair of Strengths of Materials at theKyiv Polytechnic Institute. The return to his native Ukraine turned out to be an important part of his career and also influenced his future personal life. From 1907 to 1911, as aprofessor at the Polytechnic Institute he did research in the earlier variant of theFinite Element Method of elastic calculations, the so-calledRayleighmethod. During those years he also pioneered work onbuckling, and published the first version of his famousStrength of Materials textbook. He was elected dean of the Division of Structural Engineering in 1909.
In 1911 he signed a protest against Minister for Education Kasso and was fired from the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.In 1911 he was awarded the D. I. Zhuravski prize of theSt. Petersburg State Transport University that helped him survive after losing his job. He went toSt Petersburg where he worked as a lecturer and then a Professor in theElectrotechnical Institute and the St Petersburg Institute of the Railways (1911–1917). During that time he developed thetheory of elasticity and the theory ofbeam deflection, and continued to study buckling. In 1918 he returned to Kyiv and assistedVladimir Vernadsky in establishing theUkrainian Academy of Sciences – the oldestacademy among theSoviet republics other than Russia. In 1918–1920 Timoshenko headed the newly established Institute of Mechanics of theUkrainian Academy of Sciences, which today carries his name.
After theArmed Forces of South Russia of generalDenikin had taken Kyiv in 1919, Timoshenko moved from Kyiv toRostov-on-Don. After travel viaNovorossiysk,Crimea andConstantinople to theKingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, he arrived inZagreb, where he got professorship at the Zagreb Polytechnic Institute. In 1920, during the briefliberation of Kyiv from Bolsheviks, Timoshenko traveled to the city, reunited with his family and returned with his family toZagreb.
He is remembered for delivering lectures inRussian while using as many words inCroatian as he could; the students were able to understand him well.
In 1922, Timoshenko moved to theUnited States where he worked for theWestinghouse Electric Corporation from 1923 to 1927, after which he became a faculty professor in theUniversity of Michigan where he created the firstbachelor's anddoctoral programs in engineering mechanics. His textbooks have been published in 36 languages. His first textbooks and papers were written inRussian; later in his life, he published mostly inEnglish. In 1928 he was an Invited Speaker of theICM in Bologna.[16] From 1936 onward he was a professor atStanford University. He was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1939 and the United StatesNational Academy of Sciences in 1940.[17]
Timoshenko's younger brothers, architect Serhii (Sergius Timoshenko, Ukrainian Minister of Transport, participant in the 1921Second Winter Campaign against the Soviet regime, and member of the Polish Senate),[18][19] and economist Volodymyr, both immigrated to the United States as well.
In 1957,ASME established a medal named after Stephen Timoshenko; he became its first recipient. TheTimoshenko Medal honors Stephen P. Timoshenko as the world-renowned authority in the field ofmechanical engineering and it commemorates his contributions as author and teacher. The Timoshenko Medal is given annually for distinguished contributions in applied mechanics. In 1960 he moved toWuppertal,West Germany to be with his daughter.
In addition to histextbooks, in 1963 Timoshenko wrote a bookEngineering Education in Russia and anautobiography,As I Remember in the Russian language. It was translated into English in 1968[9] by sponsorship of Stanford University.Jacob Pieter Den Hartog, who was Timoshenko's co-worker in the early 1920s at Westinghouse, wrote a review in the magazineScience[20] stating that "between 1922 and 1962 he [S.P. Timoshenko] wrote a dozen books on all aspects of engineering mechanics, which are in their third or fourth U.S. edition and which have been translated into half a dozen foreign languages each, so that his name as an author and scholar is known to nearly every mechanical and civil engineer in the entire world.. Then, Den Hartog stressed: "There is no question that Timoshenko did much for America. It is an equally obvious truth that America did much for Timoshenko, as it did for millions of other immigrants for all over the world. However, our autobiographer has never admitted as much to his associates and pupils who, like myself often have been pained by his casual statements in conversation. That pain is not diminished by reading these statements on the printed page and one would have wished for a little less acid and a little more human kindness."
The celebrated theory that takes into accountshear deformation androtary inertia was developed by Timoshenko in collaboration withPaul Ehrenfest. Thus it is referred to asTimoshenko-Ehrenfest beam theory. This fact was testified by Timoshenko.[21] The interrelation between Timoshenko-Ehrenfest beam andEuler-Bernoulli beam theory was investigated in the book by Wang, Reddy and Lee.[22]
He died in 1972 and his ashes are buried inAlta Mesa Memorial Park,Palo Alto,California.
Eduard Ivanovich Grigolyuk (1923—2005) wrote several papers devoted to S.P. Timoshenko’s life and work.[23][24][25][26][27][28] He also composed two books about him.[29][30] Elishakoff et al.[31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] wrote several articles investigating S.P. Timoshenko’s scientific activities and the question of the priority.
An archive of his manuscripts, letters, and handwritten materials are available online.[41]
Timoshenko remembered his students in his autobiography:[9]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)THE MAJOR FACTS of the life of Stephen P. Timoshenko are by now well known. He was born as Stepen Prokofyevich Timoshenko* in the village of Shpotovka in the Ukraine on December 23, 1878.
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