William Prager

William Prager
Born(1903-05-23)23 May 1903
Died17 March 1980(1980-03-17) (aged 76)
NationalityAmerican
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions

William Prager, before 1940 Willy Prager (23 May 1903 – 17 March 1980), was a German-born American applied mathematician. In the field of mechanics he is well known for the Drucker–Prager yield criterion.

Biography

[edit]

Willy Prager was born on 23 May 1903 in Karlsruhe. He studied civil engineering at the Technische Universität Darmstadt and received his diploma in 1925.[1] He received his doctorate in 1926 and worked as a research assistant in the field of mechanics from 1925 to 1929.[1] From 1927 to 1929 he habilitated.[1] He was a deputy director at University of Göttingen, professor at Karlsruhe, University of Istanbul, the University of California, San Diego and Brown University, where he advised Bernard Budiansky. Prager was also on a sabbatical at IBM's research lab in Zürich.[2]

He died on 17 March 1980 in Zürich.

The Society of Engineering Science has awarded the William Prager Medal in Solid Mechanics since 1983 in his honor.[3] In 1957, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.[4]

Works

[edit]
  • Beitrag zur Kinematik des Raumfachwerks, 1926, dissertation
  • Dynamik der Stabwerke (with K. Hohenemser), 1933
  • Mechanique des solides isotropes, 1937
  • Prager, William; Hodge, Philip G. Jr. (1951). Theory of Perfectly Plastic Solids. John Wiley & Sons. LCCN 51-012695.
  • Prager, William (1961). Introduction to Mechanics of Continua. Ginn and Company.

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c "Willy (William) Prager" (PDF). Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Retrieved 22 March 2022.
  2. ^ Speiser, Ambros (1988). "IBM Research Laboratory Zurich: The Early Years". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 20: 15–28. doi:10.1109/85.646205.
  3. ^ William Prager Medal
  4. ^ "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | William Prager". Retrieved 2019-09-16.
[edit]