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WILLIAM PRAGER
1 903- 1 980
BY DANIEL C. DRUCKER
WILLIAM PRAGER, University Professor Emeritus of Engineering
and Applied Mechanics, Brown University, died on March 16,
1980, in Zurich. He had retired to Savognin, Switzerland, in 1973
with his wife Ann but maintained an extensive research activity in
his many complex fields of interest and continued to lecture on the
progress he made in his remarkably simple and clearly organized
manner. At the same time he served as Editor of Computer Methods in
Applied Mechanics and Engineering.
Born on May 23, 1903, in Karlsruhe, Germany, Dr.. Prager
received his Dipl. Ing. degree from the Institute of Technology in
Darmstadt in 1925 and his Dr. Ing. the next year. At the age of
twenty-six he was appointed Acting Director of the Institute of
Applied Mechanics in Gottingen and three years later was made
Professor of Technical Mechanics in Karlsruhe. Before leaving Ger-
many in protest in 1934, he had established an international reputa-
tion as an engineer and applied mathematician in the statics and
dynamics of structures and in the theories of elasticity and plasticity.
His subsequent research at the University of Istanbul enhanced his
reputation still further, so that on his arrival at Brown University in
1941 he was a key member of the world-famous group that was
brought together at that time to place applied mechanics in the
United States at a firm high level of applied mathematics. The first
issue of the Quarterly of Applied Mathematics, which he edited continu-
ously from the time he founded it until 1965, appeared in April
1943.
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234
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
Dr. Prager established the Division of Applied Mathematics at
Brown in 1946, served "S its first Chairman, and guided its research
and teaching by gathering around him younger people in a wide
variety of fields of applied mechanics, applied mathematics, physics,
and engineering. His own research during this period covered an
enormous diversity of topics in the mechanics of continua of all
types, problems of traffic flow, and application of computers to
problems in economics and engineering. A small sampling of this
pioneering work in applied mechanics includes his illuminating rep-
resentations in function space developed with Professor Synge, vari-
ational principles for stability, stress-strain relations in the plastic
range including the effects of temperature, the theorems of limit
analysis and design, minimum weight structures, geometric repre-
sentation of the slip-line field in the stress plane and hodograph
plane, solutions with stress discontinuities, dynamic plasticity, and
his inventive models of material behavior as kinematic hardening
and ideal locking.
Brown University recognized his scientific and administrative
abilities by designating him as the first Chairman of the Physical
Sciences Council and then as L. Herbert Ballou University Profes-
sor. Industrial concerns as well as universities and professional soci-
eties valued his advice and counsel. National Academy of
Engineering and National Research Council committees and panels
were the beneficiaries of his thoughtful input.
Professor Prager's awards and honors predate and postdate his
election to the National Academy of Engineering in 1965. They
include foreign membership in the Polish Academy of Science, fel-
lowship in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and honor-
ary membership in the Groupe Francis de Rheologie, the Groupe
pour l'Avancement des Methodes Numeriques de l'Ingenieur, Paris.
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers awarded him the
Worcester Reed Warner and Timoshenko medals, and the American
Society of Civil Engineering presented him with the van Karman
Medal. Honorary degrees were bestowed by the University of
Liege, Poitiers, the Politecnico di Milano, Case Institute of Technol-
ogy, Waterloo, Stuttgart, Hannover, Brown, Manchester, and Brux-
elles. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers invited him to be
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WILLIAM PRAGER
235
their lames Clayton Lecturer. Membership in the National Acad-
emy of Sciences came in 1968 and Correspondent, Academic des
Sciences de l'Institut de France in 1974.
His almost 20 books and many of his more than 200 papers have
appeared or have been translated into several languages. They have
had a tremendous worldwide influence on those not fortunate
enough to have direct contact with this truly unusual person who
was always willing to share ideas and credit. Dr. Prager's many
former students and junior colleagues, whom he encouraged so
warmly and helped so unselfishly to develop, now occupy key posi-
tions in research and teaching in many countries. He could and did
converse with them in fluent French or Turkish as well as in German
or English. Whenever possible, an hour of classical music very early
in the morning began each busy day of his innovative research,
teaching, and service to the profession.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
applied mathematics
