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Also see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_T._Koiter
http://imechanica.org/node/1400
Elected in 1982 as Foreign Member of the Royal Society
from: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/770276?uid=3739560&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=56115701173
and: http://rsbm.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/45/269.abstract
A teacher’s son, Koiter was born in Amsterdam in 1914, but grew up and went to school in the town of Zutphen. From 1931 to 1936 he studied mechanical engineering at what was then the Technische Hogeschool Delft (now the Technische Universiteit Delft), where he graduated with honours. His first position was at the former Rijks-Studiedienst voor de luchtvaart (now the Nationaal Luchten Ruimtevaartlaboratorium), where he immersed himself further in applied mechanics and more especially its practical application to engineering under the guidance of A. van der Neut. Koiter spent his evenings working on his dissertation, which he defended shortly after the war, in November 1945—again with honours, with C.B. Biezeno being his supervisor. Koiter had actually finished the dissertation in 1942 but, not wanting to graduate from a university that required a pledge of loyalty to the occupying forces, he waited until 1945. It was published in Dutch because German had been the only foreign language permitted during the war. Another fifteen years would pass before the original text was translated into English, under the auspices of NASA in the USA. At Harvard University in the late 1950s, Koiter presented the results of his research, which were received enthusiastically. However, when an American colleague asked whether he could publish it, the Dutchman was rather indignant: it had already appeared in 1945, after all.
Koiter’s scientific qualities were quite remarkable. His pioneering dissertation ‘On the stability of the elastic equilibrum’ led to an entirely new approach to the stability of thin-walled constructions, the famous theory of the imperfection-sensitive buckling load. This theory is crucial to the safety and reliability of thin-walled structures in aeronautical and space technology, civil technology, mechanical engineering technology and maritime technology. Koiter was brilliant at pointing the way to determining the sometimes inordinate influence of small irregularities in thin-walled structures, which can have disastrous consequences. During his active career he thus became the world’s leading expert in the field.
At the same time Koiter made fundamental contributions in other, more or less related fields, such as the shell theory, fracture mechanics and the theory of plasticity, to say nothing of the countless other scientists that he inspired. Given his work and his authoritative personality, he was undoubtedly the most influential Dutch specialist in the field of applied mechanics of the twentieth century, and one of a select group of scientists in his field whose contributions will long be remembered.
There is no lack of evidence of Koiter’s international stature. For instance, he was successively elected Bureau Member (1956–60), Treasurer (1960–68), President (1968–72) and Vice-President (1972–76) of the Board of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM), the world’s most prestigious association in the field. In 1959 he was made a Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).
Characteristic of Koiter were his penchant for extremely careful formulation, in speech and print, and also his sense of humour. When, for example, in the 1960s, he was investigating the shell theory, and finally concluded that the best formulation had already been written by the English scientist A.E.H. Love, he gave a talk entitled ‘All you need is Love’. Careful formulation also characterized Koiter’s lectures: he never said too little or too much. This might explain why the students in his day introduced the lecture unit known as the ‘milli-Koiter’. Other lectures were assessed by the students using the Koiter scale. Koiter was the sort of scientist who, in the course of preparing or delivering lectures, would develop new theories. It was in just such a context, for instance, that he showed how the error in the frequently used equations of L.H. Donnell for shallow shells can be reduced by slightly adjusting the equations, provided that the boundary conditions are adjusted accordingly.
In July 1996 the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) decided to introduce a prestigious award in Koiter’s honour, the Warner T. Koiter Medal. The medal, of the same status as the Timoshenko Medal, will be presented every year or two to a distinguished scientist in the field of solid mechanics who has demonstrated international leadership. Strikingly, the ASME decided to award the first Warner T. Koiter Medal to Koiter himself. It was presented to him in Delft by J.W. Hutchinson of Harvard University on 22 January 1997, during a splendid gathering of Koiter’s colleagues and friends. The winner himself spoke on the occasion, almost as he had always done.
In Warner Tjardus Koiter the KNAW has lost a brilliant scientist of great renown and tremendous integrity, who will live on in the memory of his many friends.
-from the 1999 tribute by D. H. van Campen, given in its entirety along with two additional tributes (2000) by Johann Arbocz, et al and by Isaac Elishakoff given in their entirety in the link, "Professor Warner T. Koiter".
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