Stepan Prokopovich Timoshenko[3] (Ukrainian: Степан Прокопович Тимошенко, romanized: Stepan Prokopovych Tymoshenko; [Степан Прокофьевич Тимошенко] Error: {{Langx}}: invalid parameter: |p= (help); December 22 [O.S. December 10] 1878 – May 29, 1972), later known as Stephen Timoshenko, was a Russian[4][5][6][7] and later an American[8]engineer and academician.
In the fall of 1906, he was appointed to the Chair of Strengths of Materials at the Kyiv 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 a professor at the Polytechnic Institute he did research in the earlier variant of the Finite Element Method of elastic calculations, the so-called Rayleigh method. During those years he also pioneered work on buckling, and published the first version of his famous Strength 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 the St. Petersburg State Transport University that helped him survive after losing his job. He went to St Petersburg where he worked as a lecturer and then a Professor in the Electrotechnical Institute and the St Petersburg Institute of the Railways (1911–1917). During that time he developed the theory of elasticity and the theory of beam deflection, and continued to study buckling. In 1918 he returned to Kyiv and assisted Vladimir Vernadsky in establishing the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences – the oldest academy among the Soviet republics other than Russia. In 1918–1920 Timoshenko headed the newly established Institute of Mechanics of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, which today carries his name.
Timoshenko's younger brothers, architect Serhii (Sergius Timoshenko, Ukrainian Minister of Transport, participant in the 1921 Second 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. The Timoshenko Medal honors Stephen P. Timoshenko as the world-renowned authority in the field of mechanical 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 to Wuppertal, West Germany to be with his daughter.
In addition to his textbooks, in 1963 Timoshenko wrote a book Engineering Education in Russia and an autobiography, 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 magazine Science[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."
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]
List of doctoral students in the U.S.
Timoshenko remembered his students in his autobiography:[9]
^Elishakoff I., "Stepan Prokofievich Timoshenko", in Encyclopedia of Continuum Mechanics (H. Altenbach and A. Öchsner, eds.), pp. 2552-2555, Berlin: Springer, 2020
^Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 19 (1993). Stephen Timoshenko. Toronto: University of Toronto.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
^Писаренко Г.С. Степан Прокофьевич Тимошенко. М., 1991.
^SODERBERG, C. RICHARD SODERBERG (1982). STEPHEN P. TIMOSHENKO 1878—1972(PDF). WASHINGTON D.C.: NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. p. 323. 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.
^Timoshenko, S. "The stiffness of suspension bridges". In: Atti del Congresso Internazionale dei Matematici: Bologna del 3 al 10 de settembre di 1928. Vol. 6. pp. 305–306.
^Den Hartog J.P.,1968. Odyssey of an engineer, Science, Vol. 160, pp.1102-1103
^Timoshenko, S. P. (1922) "On the transverse vibrations of bars of uniform cross-section", Philosophical Magazine, page 125
^Wang, C.M., Reddy, J.N. and Lee, K.H. (2000) Shear Deformable Beams and Plates: Relationship With Classical Solutions, Oxford, UK: Elsevier
^.Grigolyuk E.I., S.P. Timoshenko and His Works in the Field of Stability of Deformable Systems, in Stability of Beams, Plates, and Shells (E.I. Grigolyuk, ed.), Moscow: Nauka, 731-800, 1974 (in Russian).
^.Grigolyuk E.I., S.P. Timoshenko and His Works in Problems of Mechanics of Deformable Solids and Analysis of Engineering Structures, in S.P. Timoshenko: Static and Dynamic Problems in Theory of Elasticity, pp. 515-542, Kiev: “Naukova Dumka” Publishers, 1975 (in Russian).
^Grigolyuk E.I., S.P. Timoshenko and Modern Mechanics, Problemy Prochnosti (Strength of Materials), Issue 5, 116-121, 1989 (in Russian).
^Grigolyuk E.I., “The Difference in Scientific Preparedness of Russian and American Engineers at that Time Was Stunning,” (Nauka i Zhizn) Science and Life, Issue 7, 48-54, 1997 (in Russian).
^Grigolyuk E.I., Once Again on One Named Prize, Vestnik Rosiisko: Akademii Nauk (Proceedings of the Russian Academy of Sciences), Vol. 68(3), 266-268, 1998a (in Russian).
^Grigolyuk E.I., How I was Publishing Works of S.P. Timoshenko, Vestnik Rosiiskoi Akademii Nauk (Proceedings of Russian Academy of Sciences), Vol. 68(12), 1109-1112, 1998b (in Russian).
^Grigolyuk E. I., S.P. Timoshenko: Life and Destiny, St. Petersburg: Krylov State Research Centre, 2000 (in Russian).
^Grigolyuk E.I. (2002) S.P. Timoshenko: Life and Destiny, Moscow: Aviation Institute Press (in Russian).
^Elishakoff, I., Julius Kaplunov and Evgeniya Nolde (2015) “Celebrating the centenary of Timoshenko’s study of effects of shear deformation and rotary inertia”, Applied Mechanics Reviews, Vol. 67(6), article 060802
^Elishakoff, I., “Stepan Prokofievich Timoshenko and America” (2019) ZAMM: Zeitschrift für angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik, Vol. 99(3)
^Elishakoff I. (2020) “Who developed the so-called Timoshenko beam theory?”, Mathematics and Mechanics of Solids 25(1): 97-116
^Elishakoff, I., Julius Kaplunov, Elizabeth Kaplunov (2020) “Galerkin’s method was not developed by Ritz, contrary to the Timoshenko’s statement”, in Nonlinear Dynamics of Discrete and Continuous Systems (A. Abramyan, I. Andrianov and V. Gaiko, eds.), pp. 63-82, Springer, Berlin
^ Elishakoff, I., (2021) ” Stephen Timoshenko's life during last five years in the Russian Empire: From the letters of his son Gregory”, Mechanics Research Communications, Vol.115, article 103691
^Elishakoff I., and Konstantin Volokh (2021) "Centenary of two pioneering theories in mechanics", Mathematics and Mechanics of Solids 26(12): 1896-1904
^Elishakoff I. (2021) "Letters of S.P. Timoshenko to V. I. Vernadsky recently discovered at the Columbia University’s library, with analysis of his attitudes”, Mathematics and Mechanics of Solids 27(6): 943-975
^ Elishakoff I., Daniel Segalman and Firas Khasawneh (2022) “The 100th anniversary of the Timoshenko-Ehrenfest beam model”, Journal of Vibration and Acoustics, article 060301
^ Elishakoff I. (2022) “Did S.P. Timoshenko and P. Ehrenfest overestimate the importance of the fourth-order time derivative in their theory of beams?", Journal of Vibration and Acoustics, Vol. 144, article 061012