Stephen Timoshenko — mechanics (father of) with roots in the Russian Empire
Stepan Prokopovich Timoshenko, known in the West as Stephen Timoshenko, was born on 22 December 1878 (some sources give 23 December) in the village of Shpotovka, in the Konotop district of the Chernigov Governorate of the Russian Empire, now in Sumy Oblast in Ukraine. He went to the real school in Romny and graduated in 1901 from the St Petersburg Institute of Railway Engineers, also pursuing advanced studies in Germany.
From 1907 he taught at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute. In 1911 he signed a protest against the education minister Lev Kasso and was dismissed, and he went on to teach at the Polytechnic and other institutes in St Petersburg. At the end of 1917 he returned to Kiev, where in 1918 he was among the founding members of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. As the Civil War brought repeated changes of power to Kiev, he moved south and in March 1920 reached the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes; after briefly returning to Kiev to collect his family, he became a professor at the Zagreb Polytechnic Institute.
In 1922 he moved to the United States and joined the research laboratories of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, where his colleagues included Vladimir Zworykin. In 1927 he returned to academic life at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he created the first bachelor's and doctoral programmes in engineering mechanics, and in 1936 moved to Stanford, where he taught and wrote for the rest of his career.
His textbooks, written in English, among them Strength of Materials (1930), Theory of Elasticity (1934), Vibration Problems in Engineering (1937), Theory of Plates and Shells and Theory of Structures (1945), went through many editions and shaped the teaching of the subject across the world; terms such as the 'Timoshenko plate' remain in use. In 1957 the American Society of Mechanical Engineers established the Timoshenko Medal, and he was its first recipient. He also received the Levy Medal (1944) and the Elliott Cresson Medal (1958) and was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society.
In retirement he moved to West Germany to live with his daughter, and he died in Wuppertal on 29 May 1972, aged ninety-three. His ashes were buried in Palo Alto, California.
"Left Kiev in 1920 for the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, taught at Zagreb, and moved to the United States in 1922."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Shpotovka, Konotop uyezd, Chernigov Governorate (now Sumy Oblast, Ukraine)
Born in Shpotovka, in the Chernigov Governorate, in 1878, he studied in St Petersburg, taught at the Kiev and St Petersburg polytechnics and in 1918 helped found the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, before leaving for Yugoslavia in 1920.
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Shpotovka, Konotop uyezd, Chernigov Governorate (now Sumy Oblast, Ukraine). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.