Warner Tjardus Koiter (Amsterdam, June 16, 1914 –Delft, September 2, 1997) was an influential mechanical engineer and the Professor of Applied Mechanics atDelft University of Technology in theNetherlands from 1949 to 1979.
Warner Tjardus Koiter was born inAmsterdam. After primary and secondary education, he enrolled into Delft University of Technology in 1931, graduating with honours as amechanical 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 hisPhD thesis,On the Stability of Elastic Equilibrium, which was defended in Delft, November 1945; it was supervised byC. B. Biezeno.[1] 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 byNASA 15 years later. (Translation by Eduard Riks)[2]
In 1949, he was appointed Professor of Applied Mechanics inDelft, where he stayed until his retirement in 1979.
Koiter 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 isLove'. He published approximately 150 reports and papers.
Koiter was awarded theVon Karman medal by theASCE and theTimoshenko Medal by theASME. He obtained honorary doctorates from Universities of Leicester, Glasgow, Bochum, andGhent. Koiter was elected a member of theRoyal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959.[3] In 1977 he was elected an international member of theNational Academy of Engineering (NAE) of the United States.[4][5] He was elected a Foreign Member of theRoyal Society in 1982.[6] In 1996, theAmerican Society of Mechanical Engineers instated theWarner T. Koiter medal for achievements insolid mechanics, and awarded him the first one in 1997.[7]
