John W. Hutchinson facts for kids

John W. Hutchinson (born April 10, 1939) is a famous American engineer and professor. He is known for his work in solid mechanics. This field studies how solid objects behave when forces are applied to them. It helps us understand how structures and materials work.

Hutchinson was chosen to be a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1983. This was because he made important discoveries about how structures bend or break. He also helped us understand how engineering materials behave and crack.

Early Life and Education

John Hutchinson was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1939. He was the oldest child of John W. and Evelyn Eastburn Hutchinson. When he was a baby, his family moved to Bridgeton, New Jersey. His father became a minister there.

John grew up in Bridgeton and went to high school there. He then went to Lehigh University for college from 1956 to 1960. He chose to study Engineering Mechanics. This was a new subject at the time. Space achievements, like those from the Soviet Union, made many young engineers excited. A summer job at Boeing in 1959 also inspired him.

After college, Hutchinson decided to study mechanical engineering at Harvard University. He worked on his Ph.D. research with Bernard Budiansky. Budiansky was an expert in solid mechanics. Hutchinson's research looked at how metals behave when they are stretched or bent. He studied how tiny parts of the metal (called grains) affect the whole material.

Starting His Career

After finishing his Ph.D. in 1963, Hutchinson spent six months in Denmark. He worked at the Technical University of Denmark. He was then invited to join the faculty at Harvard as a professor. This became a long-lasting connection.

He worked at Harvard for fifty years. He is now a Research Professor there. He also teaches at the Technical University of Denmark. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

When Hutchinson started teaching at Harvard in 1964, he learned a lot from older colleagues. These included George Carrier, Bruce Chalmers, and Lyell Sanders. The 1960s were a time of big growth in engineering at American universities. Harvard was an exciting place for a young professor.

At first, his Dean told him he might not get a permanent job at Harvard. But the Dean was wrong! A permanent position opened up. In 1969, Hutchinson became a full professor. He was one of the youngest professors at Harvard at that time.

Key Research and Discoveries

After his Ph.D., Hutchinson worked with Budiansky on "buckling" problems. They studied how thin, curved structures, like those in airplanes, can suddenly collapse. Even a perfectly made structure might buckle at a much lower force than expected. This is because all real structures have tiny flaws. Their work helped explain and measure how these flaws affect buckling. They used ideas from Warner Koiter, a Dutch scientist.

Understanding Materials

In the 1960s, scientists started to combine mechanics and materials science. Solid mechanics began to focus on problems with materials. Hutchinson became very interested in how materials behave at a tiny level.

From the late 1960s to the 1980s, Hutchinson studied how materials break. He worked on "nonlinear fracture mechanics." This helps understand cracks in tough metal alloys. Regular fracture mechanics didn't work when metals bent a lot before cracking. This bending often happens with many engineering metals.

In 1968, he published a paper about stresses near a crack in bending materials. Another scientist, James Rice, published similar work. Their ideas became known as the HRR crack tip fields. These ideas are very important for understanding how cracks form in materials. James Rice later joined Hutchinson at Harvard.

Working with Others

In the late 1970s, Hutchinson started working with A.G. (Tony) Evans. Evans was a materials scientist. Their teamwork lasted over thirty years. Evans was great at finding important problems. He was also good at bringing together different experts.

Hutchinson's skill in mechanics and Evans' knowledge of materials worked well together. They helped solve problems in many areas. These included making ceramics stronger and creating materials for high temperatures. They also studied how thin films and coatings break. They wrote 74 papers together.

Recent Research

In the 1990s and later, Hutchinson continued to research many different problems. He kept working on older topics too. This gave him a wide range of interests and knowledge.

New areas he explored included how layered materials break. These are used in electronics and optics. He also studied how metals behave at very small sizes. At these tiny scales, materials act differently.

Most recently, Hutchinson has studied soft materials. These include things like rubber and gels. These materials are becoming very important. They have many uses, especially in medicine.

Awards and Recognition

John Hutchinson has been very lucky in his career. He worked in a place that supported his research. He also had amazing colleagues and students. He became an engineer at a time when America invested a lot in science.

He has guided 36 students through their Ph.D. studies. He has published almost 350 technical papers. He has worked with nearly 200 different co-authors. About 65% of his co-authors were from America. The rest were from other countries. About 25% were Harvard students or faculty.

Hutchinson has received many honors. He was given the Timoshenko Medal in 2002. In 2015, he received the Ferst Award for mentoring students. Many of his former students were there for the ceremony.

He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1976. He joined the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 1983. He also became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1990. In 2013, he was elected to the Royal Society of London. This is a very old and respected science group.

He has also received honorary degrees from several universities. These include the Royal Institute of Technology, the Technical University of Denmark, and Lehigh University.

In 2012, Hutchinson received the Ludwig-Prandtl-Ring. This award is from the German Society for Aeronautics and Astronautics. It recognized his "outstanding contribution in the field of aerospace engineering."