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Stephen P. Timoshenko
R I C H A R D G . W E I N G A R D T , P. E . , D I S T . M . A S C E

Figure 1. Stephen Timoshenko photograph in the lobby of the mechanical engineering building at Stanford University Courtesy of Richard Weingardt and Stanford University

Although a world-renowned authority on theoretical and applied mechanics by the time he immigrated to America in 1922, Stephen P. Timoshenko Stepan Prokofyevich Timofeyevich solidied his mark on the profession while employed in the United States. Because of his unprecedented work while at Westinghouse Laboratories in Pittsburgh and the universities of Michigan and Stanford, he has been immortalized as Americas Father of Engineering Mechanics. His accomplishments as a teacher, writer, engineer, and intellectual greatly impacted engineering education in the United States and beyond for all time. His many seminal books and papers on the mechanics of materials, statics and dynamics, vibrations, structural theory, stability, elasticity, torsion and buckling,

and plates and shells remain in wide use today. His range of engineering and scientic contacts around the world was awesome, and his widespread internationalinuenceduringhisactiveyearsin both the United States and Russia are known in the profession as The TimoshenkoEra. While a distinguished professor and scholar at both Michigan and Stanford, he assembled internationally respected faculties that served as magnets for engineering scholars from all over the world. The list of his former pupils and colleagues make up a Whos Who in engineering mechanics. Students and peers invoked and continue to invoke his name with awe, and being in his presencewaslikebeingamongadeity. During his time at Stanford, James Gere a Timoshenko protg, colleague, and co-author of the widely-used Mechanics of Materials said, Timoshenko always admonished his Ph.D. students not to make their doctoral dissertationstheirlastscienticeffortbuttobe constantlyalerttonewdevelopments. According to Gere: Timoshenkos personal contributions to mechanics include the development of the energy method for dealing with problems in structural stability, the theory of lateral vibrations of beams also known as the Timoshenko-beam theory, the concept of the shear center of beams, the theory of warping and torsion of structural members, and many other topics from elasticity theory. Much of the work he pioneered is now classical subject matter that is taught as standard topics in engineeringcourses. Timoshenko was the author of thirteen gold-standard textbooks and many papers on engineering mechanics. His works ranged from writings for undergraduate courses to those for
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advancedgraduatestudentsandresearch workers.Usedbyhundredsofthousands of engineering students and engineers throughout the world, his books and papers are available in numerous languages. His textbooks alone have been published in as many as ve editions and translated into as many as thirty-ve languages. His best-known textbook Strength of Materials was published in Russia in 1911 and translated into English in 1930, whereupon it achieved tremendous success in the English-speaking countries.Histextbooksare: 1. Strength of Materials 2. History of Strength of Materials 3. Theory of Plates and Shells 4. Elements of Strength of Materials 5. Vibration Problems in Engineering 6. Advanced Dynamics 7. Theory of Elasticity 8. Theory of Elastic Stability 9. Applied Elasticity 10. Mechanics of Materials 11. Theory of Elasticity 12. Theory of Structures 13. Engineering Mechanics In addition to these seminal publications, Timoshenko also wrote two other books, Engineering Education in Russia and As I Remember, an autobiography, rst published in Russian in 1963 then translated into English in 1968. All his books were frequently reprinted and oftentimesupdatedwithhisformerstudentsasco-authors. Stephen Timoshenko was born on December 23, 1878, in the village of Shpotovka near Kiev on the steppes of Ukraine, which was part of Russia at the time. He came from a long line of Ukrainians. His ambitious father Prokop Timofeyevich Timoshenko, who was thirty-one years old when

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Figure 2. Stephen Timoshenko sculpture in the lobby of the mechanical engineering building at Stanford University Courtesy of Richard Weingardt and Stanford University

Stephen arrived, was born in a small cottage owned by Stepan Kandyba, a wellto-do Ukrainian landowner. Kandyba was married to Prokops older sister and young Prokop was brought up as a Kandyba family member with all the privileges. Prokop studied land surveying and eventually became a successful professional surveyor. Later, he also became a landowner of some means, so his sons Stephen and his two younger brothers Serhij and Vladimirgrew up in upper-middle-class comfort. Although his father was a good provider, Stephen related that his father was a fanatic for work. Most of Stephens upbringing was left in the hands of his mother, who was of Polish descent her maiden name was Saranavskaja and her father a military man. She encouraged her children to take full advantage of all of their educational opportunities, and to constantly striveforsuccess. In the concluding decade of the nineteenth century, Russia was relatively stable and everyday life in the Timoshenko familys pleasant rural surroundings was more or less tranquil. The youthful days of Stephen and his brothers were happy and carefree with plenty of open space and farmland to roam. In 1891, the grand Trans-Siberian Railroad project 18911916, between Moscow in the west and Vladivostok in theeast,beganmakingitswayacrossthe

country. Many young Russians, including thirteen-year-old Stephen, dreamed of how exciting it would be to be a railroadengineer. Timoshenko received his secondary schooling in the nearby town of Romny, from 1889 to 1896. His outstanding subject was mathematics, which t into his early ambition to study civil-railroad engineering. His language studies were less successful and, even though his Russian had a strong Ukrainian accent a characteristic that would remain with him his entire life, he was well read in the Russian classics. One of Stephens schoolmates and closest friends while in Romny was Abram Ioffe, who would onedaybeafamousphysicist. After earning a gold medal for superior scholarship at Romny and passing stringent college-entrance examinations, Timoshenko was accepted at the highlyregardedInstituteofEngineersof Ways of Communication IEWC at St. Petersburg. On his rst trip to the coastal city in 1896, he was accompanied by his mother. His days and experiences in St. Petersburg began opening his eyes to the prospects of a world beyond his rural upbringing. While at IEWC, Stephen made a number of trips to western Europe, mostly during vacation periods, to observe activities and conditions there. These trips greatly stimulated his engineering mind and were the beginnings of the close associations he would forge with outstanding professionals in his eld, particularly in Germany. Timoshenko graduated from IEWC in 1901 and took a position there as a teacher. Simultaneously, he began serving his compulsory military service. Within a year, he was engaged in the institutions mechanics laboratory, where his duties included assisting senior faculty members in their lectures onmathematics. In 1902, following completion of his military service, twenty-four-year-old Timoshenko married Alexandra Archangelskaya, a medical school student.
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They would have three children Gregory, Marina, and Anna. Gregory would become an electrical engineer for years an imminent professor of electrical engineering at the University of Connecticut. Marina would marry a prominent Stanford Professor James Goodier who was the co-author with Timoshenko of the textbook Theory of Elasticity. Anna would move to Germany and would provide a retreat there for her fatherinhistwilightyears. In 1903, Timoshenko took a position as an instructor at the newly organized Polytechnic Institute of St. Petersburg PISP. He worked under Viktor Kirpichyov, who introduced him to Lord Rayleighs Theory of Sound, the Castigliano Theorem and RayleighRitz Method. This exposure to creative scientic work was catalytic in inducing Timoshenko to become a teacher rather thanapracticingengineer. By 1904, thirty-six-year-old Nicholas II 1868-1918, who had become TsarofRussiaatagetwenty-sixwhenhis father died unexpectedly at age fortynine, had begun to exhibit a serious weakness for high-level governance and it was causing considerable unrest throughout the country. Because of this political turmoil and turbulence nationally, the 1904-1905 school year at PISP was quite unstable. The disastrous Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905, which saw the Tsars Army humiliated by the Japanese, increased student demonstrations and general unrest even further. At the end of the school term in 1905, the institute at St. Petersburg was abruptly closed and Timoshenko left unemployed. He had been spending his summers inEurope,mostlyinGermany,wherehe was becoming well acquainted with famous engineering scholars like August Foppl in Munich and Ludwig Prandtl 1875-1953 and Felis Klein at Gottingen. So when PISP shut down, Timoshenko temporarily moved to Germany to do advanced studies at the Munich Polytechnic Institute and the

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University of Gottingen School of Philosophy, from which he graduated in 1905.UnderthegreatPrandtl,whowas head of applied mathematics at Gottingen and involved in epoch-making work on boundary layers in uid ow and aerodynamics, Timoshenko developed a strong interest in resolving the analysis of buckling and torsion in structures. At the same time, he continued his work on elastic stability, also studying applied sciences, potential theory, andthermodynamics. In the fall of 1906, Timoshenko became a professor at the Polytechnic Institute in Kiev PIK while working onhisPh.D.,whichhereceivedin1907. He was placed in charge of PIKs strength of materials division. This return to his native Ukraine holding such a high position was a personal triumph for him, one that played an important part in his career and inuenced his future personal life. In 1909, he was elected dean of the structural engineering department. During his time at PIK, he continued his pioneering scientic work on structural buckling and elastic stability, and published the rst variant of his famous strength of materialstextbook. In 1911, the nationwide political turmoil in Russia was reaching the breaking point and student dissention on most campuses was festering out of control. Timoshenko was not unaffected. He and two other professors signed a protest against the minister of education. They were summarily red from PIK and Timoshenko was once again withoutajobandsteadyincome. Ironically, he was awarded the 1911 Zhukovsky Prize from the Russian Academy of Science shortly after. With the prize came a medal, plaque, certicates, and a generous monetary award of 2,500 gold rubles. He and his wife used some of the money to take a vacation, which included an extended trip to England where he attended a mathematical congress at Cambridge. There, he met for the rst time such leaders in

Figure 3. Popular Timoshenko textbooks Courtesy of Richard Weingardt

his profession as Lord Rayleigh, August Love,HoraceLamb,andLeviCivita. Timoshenko was greatly impressed with them and their work, and inspired by an impressive lecture given by a young intellectual from Gottingen, Theodore von Karman 1881-1963. They struck up a lifelong relationship. Throughout the proceedings, Timoshenko found himself hampered by his lack of uency in English. He vowed to remedythesituationassoonaspossible. Returning to Russia in the fall of 1912, Timoshenko resumed part-time teaching assignments at several schools in St. Petersburg, including being a guest lecturer at his alma mater IEWC. Additionally, he did consulting work on the elastic stability of ship bulkheads for the Naval Ministry of St. Petersburg. During this time, he also continued to rene his theories on the buckling of structures, elasticity and beam deections, and the analysis of structures on elasticfoundations. Timoshenkos period of disgrace with the authorities ofcially ended in 1913 and he was made a professor at IEWC. Later, his assignment was extendedtoincludeteachingattheElectrical Engineering Institute of the PolytechnicInstitute. In the summer of 1914, after reorganizing the strength of materials depart311
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ment at IEWC, Timoshenko took his familyonanextendedvacationtoKhapsalw on the Baltic. There he completed the proofreading of his rst edition of Theory of Elasticity and rened his techniques for the analysis of the elastic stability of ship structures. During his vacation, World War I 1914-1918 began and, with it, the beginning of the end of the old world order as known by Timoshenko and other educated Russiansofmeans. Timoshenko returned to university life in St. Petersburg amid very unsettling times. His country did not fare well in the war, and the tsar became increasinglyunpopular.MuchofNicholass unpopularity was due to the hypnotic fascination his wife Alexandra had for Grigori Rasputin 1871-1916, a self-proclaimed monk, holy man, and healer who had the tsarina convinced he and only he could cure her son Alexei who suffered from hemophilia, a hereditary disease from her side of the family that prevented blood from clotting properly. Hated by the nobility for his debauchery and abuse of power, and the inuence he had on the policies of Nicholas, Rasputin was assassinated in 1916. By then he had considerably damaged the royal familys reputation withtheRussianpeople. As Russias battle losses mounted during the early days of World War I and living conditions deteriorated, Nicholas abdicated his throne, ending his reign on March 15, 1917. Revolution and civil war then reached a fever pitch. The provisional government, formed after the tsars departure, was toppled by the Bolsheviks led by Lenin and Trotsky. Nicholas and Alexandra and their children were taken prisoners, and the nal collapse of Russias ages-old political and social structure careened intoitsnaldaysofdisintegration. These unsettling political, military, and societal events and times resulted in considerable difculty for Timoshenko and his family and other antiBolsheviks. The worsening living con-

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ditions in Russia at the time were well portrayed in the movie Doctor Zhivago, basedonthenovelbyBorisPasternak. In 1918, Timoshenko left St. Petersburg and returned to Kiev where he assisted Vladimir Vernadsky in establishing the Ukrainian Academy of Sciencesthe oldest academy among the Soviet republics other than Russia. On July 16, the exiled tsar and his family were murdered by the Communists, underordersfromLenin. DuringthistimeTimoshenkowasin frequent contact with many of his former students and colleagues beyond Russia. All of them, despairing about the impossibility of order returning to Russia, urged him to ee the country. They told him of opportunities for an important professorship position in Yugoslavia. But he resisted leaving his country. While he was serving with the Russian White Army in Kiev, the Red Army the Bolsheviks took over the city,soundlydefeatingtheWhiteArmy. Timoshenko now had no choicehe had to leave, posthaste. Leaving all their possessions, he and his family took ight on the last refugee freight train out of Kiev. In their exodus, which was fraught with danger, they managed to stay just one step ahead of the Bolshevik cavalry, which was in hot pursuit. During these adventures, the Timoshenkos were helped on several occasions by former pupils and once were provided muchneeded safe lodging by an admirer who had read one of his books. Years later, Timoshenko would tell his students at Stanford, That was the most practical andusefulresultofallofmywritings! The Timoshenkos eventually reached safety, winding through Warsaw, Poland, and Vienna, Austria, to get to Yugoslavia, which they reached on March 15, 1920. Once there, Timoshenko took a position as a professor at the newly established Zagreb Polytechnic Institute. While at Zagreb, he delivered his lectures in Russian while using as many

Figure 4. Cover of Timoshenkos most-read book co-author James Gere courtesy of Richard Weingardt

words in Croatian as he could. The students, though, were able to understand him well enough. With breaks in his teaching, he took brief trips to Western Europe and England, where he kept up his acquaintance with Love and met with other imminent scholars in his eld, including R. V. Southwell and G. I. Taylor. He also continued his quest to improvehisEnglish.HeandhisEnglish tutor translated some of his papers into English,sendingthemtoLove,whohad them published in England. Through this process the name of Timoshenko began to be known to English-speaking scholarsofappliedmechanics. His career at Zagreb came to an end in 1922, when he received a letter from America from a pupil of mine at the Petersburg Polytechnic, Viktor Zelow, who was then working for the Vibration Specialty Company VSC in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. VSCs president a Mr. Akimoff was familiar with and highly impressed by Timoshenkos work and quickly offered him a position with this company, which he took. The forty-three-year-old Timoshenko arrived in Philadelphia alone in June 22, 1922. His rst impression of America was not favorable; however, its opportunities were of interest to him. He sent for his wife and his youngest child, leaving the
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other two children in Germany. He wanted them to get a good education and he wasnt impressed with American schools. After a year with the VSC, Timoshenko joined the Research Laboratories of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation WEC in Pittsburgh. The intellectual atmosphere in East Pittsburgh during these years was strongly inuenced by the breakthroughs in modern physics and the natural sciences. Many physicists and international gures in science came to lecture in Pittsburgh, which stimulated an interest in these matters. On his arrival at Pittsburgh, Timoshenko thus entered an intellectual environment that seems to have been made expressly for him and to which he made greatcontributions. Richard Soderberg, a young emerging leader at WEC at the time, recalled, He Timoshenko was in his forties, had a striking appearance, wore a beard and, to younger members of our group who came under his inuence, he was a wise old man with a keen sense of humor. When Soderberg and others at WEC had the opportunity to accompany Timoshenko to international conferences such as the Congress of Applied MechanicsinZurichin1926,Soderberg recalled, We were privileged to sense the enormous range of his acquaintances in the scientic world, acquired from his years of travel and the wide distribution ofhiswritingsandtheories. By 1927, Timoshenko had become well known in the United States and his widening inuence in applied mechanics was being felt at all of the nations leading engineering colleges. He was invitedtojointhefacultyasaprofessorof graduate mechanics at the University of Michigan. He accepted. Once there, he created the rst bachelors and doctoral programsinengineeringmechanics. While at Michigan, Timoshenko realizedhisdreamofjoiningappliedand abstract sciences. One of his undertakings was a weekly seminar in which he brought together representatives from

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both camps. This led to a special Summer School of Applied Mechanics sponsored by the university. Distinguished teachers from universities in the United States and abroad attended, as did representatives from industry. Through these seminars pioneering leaders like Prandtl, von Karman, Southwell, Taylor, and H. M. Westergaard were broughttogetheratMichigan. It was during this period that he published some of his most famous textbooks and inaugurated a new era in applied mechanics in this country. He alsocontinuedtoserveasaconsultantfor Westinghouse, staying friends with his contacts there. Even though travel during the Great Depression, which began with the U.S. stock market crash in 1929,wasrestricted,Timoshenkofound ways to keep up his contacts both in his newcountryandacrosstheAtlantic. In the nal years of the U.S. depression,Timoshenkotookaprofessorshipat Stanford University in 1936, a position he would hold until his retirement in 1944. Even though he was retired, he continued teaching and writing at Stanfordforanotherdecadeorso. Shortly after Timoshenko moved to California, Hitler invaded Poland and war in Europe was underway. Staying in contact with his brothers in Russia and all his European colleagues became difcult but not impossible. Once the United States became involved in World War II in 1941, however, government restrictions made travel much morecomplicated. At Stanford, Timoshenko always showedupforclassonthedot,nomatter what. Gere recalled an incident where Timoshenko had been overseas and hadnt been seen on campus for days, and on the day of class walked into the lecture hall just as the bell rang. He had arrived by taxi after riding nonstop on a train taken from where his ocean liner docked. He nonchalantly took off his coat and his fedora cap, which he always wore, and began lecturing to the amazementofeveryone.

Said Gere, His students were always fascinated by his classroom lectures, which were inspiring and long remembered. Because of his intimate knowledge of the history of mechanics and its past masters, he taught the classical subjects through the medium of their creators, thus bringing a human dimension toatopicthatinlesserhandsmighthave proveddull. Timoshenko often spent his nonwartime summers in Europe, where his favorite vacation spots were Switzerland, Germany, or England. On these sojourns he always met with colleagues at various universities. Whenever he took trips across the Atlantic he went by ship. He didnt like airplanes, didnt knowhowtodrive,anddidntliketouse the telephone. With his aristocratic bearing and full head of silver-gray hair, the tall Timoshenko was an imposing gureoncampus. Gere, who affectionately called him Timi, said that when he knew Timoshenko: He was always pleasant, and he always looked old. And while he was well known in professional circles all over the world, the number of people admitted to his innermost sphere of affection was not large. His former students had a special position; so did a small group of his early acquaintances in the United States. But one had the impression that real intimacy was reservedforhisownfamily. By the end of World War II, Timoshenkos two younger brothers had moved to and were employed in prominent positions in the United States, and the three brothers and their families, long separated, were able to more easily gatherforfamilyfunctions.Theirrelocation to America and nearness was especially treasured by the aging Timoshenkooncehisdevotedwifepassedaway. In 1945, shortly after World War II, Timoshenko was driven by military personnel all over West Germany, where he examined what was left of German industries and research laboratories, reportinghisndingstoWashington.
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In 1958, he returned to Russia and Ukraine, his rst visit to his homeland since his exodus in the 1920s. He was royally receivedin stark contrast to earlier years when he vainly tried to get in touch with his aged father before he passed away but was refused access by theCommunists. In 1964, the eighty-six-year-old Timoshenko moved to Wuppertal, Western Germany, where his daughter AnnaHetzeltandherfamilyresided. During his professional career, Timoshenko received many honors and awards. Included among them was Stanford naming a wing of one of its main buildings the Timoshenko Laboratory for Engineering Mechanics, in 1951. In 1957, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers ASME established the Stephen Timoshenko Medal, commemorating Timoshenkos contributions to the eld of mechanical engineering as a world-renowned author and educator. As the rst recipient of the medal, he was cited for his invaluable contributions, personal example and guidance in bringing about a new era in appliedmechanics. Among the other medals he received were the 1963 James Ewing Institution of Civil Engineers of Great Britain, 1958 Cresson and 1944 Levy Franklin Institute, 1948 Trasenster Association des Ingenieurs Sortis de lEcole de Liege, 1947 James Watts International Institute of Mechanical Engineers of Great Britain, 1947 Grande Medaille Association des IngenieursDocteurs de France, 1939 Lamme American Society for Engineering Education, ASEE, 1935 Worcester Reed Warner ASME,and1911Jourawski IEWC. Timoshenko was the recipient of honorary doctorate degrees from the University of Michigan, Lehigh University,UniversityofTurin,ZagrebUniversity, University of Bologna, University of Glasgow, Munchen Technische Hochschule, and Zurich Technical Institute.

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Academies and societies he was elected to included Academia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome 1948; Royal Society, London 1944; U.S. National AcademyofScience 1941;FrenchAcademy of Science 1939; American Philosophical Society 1939; Polish Academy of Technical Sciences 1935; RussianAcademyofScience 1928;andthe UkrainianAcademyofScience 1918. Other professional organizations he was active in were ASME, ASEE, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, American Geophysical Union, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Society for Experimental Stress Analysis, Society of Automotive Engineers, Gesellschaft fur Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik, Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, and Association des IngenieursDocteurs de France. He was the founder of the Applied Mechanics Division of ASME and was inuential in starting the groups Journal of Applied Mechanics,

one of the worlds leading mechanics journals. On his sixtieth birthday, Timoshenkowashonoredwithaspecialbook Stephen Timoshenko: Sixtieth Anniversary Volumewhich contained twenty-eight of his most distinguished papers in applied mechanics. In 1953, most of his research papers, many of them rare, were reprinted in The Collected Papers of Stephen P. Timoshenko,a642-pagevolume. In his later years, Timoshenko donated all medals, awards, and certicates along with his personal library, which contained countless rare and historic books and papers, to Stanford. A special Timoshenko Room, located in the schools engineering library, was created to house his collection. He assigned theroyaltiesfromallhistextbookstothe university. The rest of his modest assets hewilledtohisthreechildren. Timoshenko died on May 29, 1972, at the age of ninety-three, in Germany, at the home of his daughter Anna. His

ashes were interred at Palo Alto Mesa Cemetery, Palo Alto, California, next to thegraveofhiswife. Gere said, His end came somewhat suddenly, after a short illness from a kidney ailment. For most of his life, Timi enjoyed excellent health and seemed always to be in high spiritsand his refreshing interest in life continued unabatedintohislastdays. With the great mans passing, a historic era ended. His legacy is that many were and will continue to be inuenced byhisextensiveteachingsandwritings. FURTHER READING Timoshenko, S. P. 1968. As I remember: The autobiography of Stephen P. Timoshenko, Van Nostrand, New York. Richard G. Weingardt is the chairman and chief executive ofcer of Richard Weingardt Consultants, Inc., Denver. He can be reached via e-mail at Rweingardt@ aol.com

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