ODQVIST

SWEDEN (see also List of Individuals)

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29.7.1899 Stockholm/S - 7.5.1984 Djursholm/S

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Folke Karl Gustaf Odqvist graduated in 1922 as a mechanical engineer from the Royal Institute of Technology KTH, Stockholm, and there continued as an assistant. He joined in 1926 the Electrolux Laboratories and returned to KTH as a Lecturer in mechanics. In 1931, Odqvist was appointed KTH professor of applied mechanics and there spent his entire career until being retired in 1966. He was the president of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics IUTAM from 1956 to 1960.

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Odqvist's career was subdivided into two portions: Before 1930 he particularly contributed to problems in hydrodynamics, whereas from 1930 onwards, he was interested in problems of theoretical mechanics, elasticity and rupture mechanics, with applications in soil mechanics. The following relates to the first era. Odqvist published in the late 1920s two notable papers on the boundary conditions as applied to hydrodynamics. It was in principle clear to Henri Navier (1785-1836) and George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903) when presenting the currently named Navier-Stokes equations that velocity at a solid boundary has to be equal to zero. However, before the boundary layer theory as introduced by Ludwig Prandtl (1875-1953) in 1904 was available, computations did not account for the "correct" boundary condition and instead allowed some finite wall velocity. This enigma was first solved for turbulent flows in 1923 by Geoffrey Ingram Taylor (1886-1975) for the so-called Taylor-Couette instability. Odqvist expanded this condition in the two papers on the necessity of zero wall velocity and thus contributed to the acceptance of an important principle in fluid mechanics.

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_{Anonymous (1936). Tre nya professorer vid Tekniska högskolan. Teknisk Tidskrift 66(34): 395. P}

_{Broberg, B., Hult, J., Niordson, F. (1967). Recent progress in applied mechanics: The Folke Odqvist volume. Almqvist & Wiksell: Stockholm. P}

_{Hult, J. (1994). Odqvist, Folke Karl Gustaf. Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon 28: 81-85. Bonnier: Stockholm. P}

_{Odqvist, F.K.G. (1926). On the determination of certain hydrodynamical problems. Arkiv för Matematik 19(A): 1-17.}

_{Odqvist, F.K.G. (1928). Über die Randwertaufgaben der Hydrodynamik zäher Flüssigkeiten. Mathematische Zeitschrift 32: 329-375.}

_{Odqvist, F.K.G. (1930). Integral equations applied to viscous fluid motion and particularly to the initial disturbance of the two-dimensional Poiseuille flow. 3 IUTAM Congress Stockholm 1: 339-345.}