SZABÓ

HUNGARY (see also List of Individuals)

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13.12.1906 Orosháza/H - 21.1.1980 Berlin/D

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István Szabó graduated in physics at the Berlin Technical University in 1929. After a ten years' stay with industry he returned to his Alma Mater in 1940 and submitted under the direction of Georg Hamel (1877-1954) a PhD thesis. He was a Lecturer in mathematics from 1947 at the newly founded TU Berlin where he took over as full professor its Institute of mechanics in 1948. He stayed there until retirement in 1975.

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Szabó was known as excellent lecturer because of his outstanding pedagogic abilities and techniques to fascinate students. In parallel Szabó has written a number of standard books for the German speaking area, such as in mathematics and in mechanics. Mention might be made here of the Mechanics of continua, prepared in collaboration with his teacher, then his Introduction to technical mechanics, which has seen a number of re-editions and counts among the most popular books in that field, and the Higher technical mechanics, as a continuation of the previous work. In the field of fluid mechanics, the 1976 book is of particular relevance because the main ideas in the development of hydraulics and hydrodynamics are resumed. The book opens with a chapter on the basic concepts of hydraulics as formulated by Newton, Euler and d'Alembert, then continues with the true history of hydraulics from Archimedes to the 20th century, and concludes with a chapter on the elasticity theory and the history of the theory of shove. Most of his books were translated in various languages.

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_{Hamel, G., Szabó, I. (1956). Mechanik der Kontinua. Teubner: Stuttgart.}

_{Poggendorff, J.C. (1953). Szabó, István. Biographisch-Literarisches Handwörterbuch 7a: 614; 8: 2269. Akademie-Verlag: Berlin, with bibliography.}

_{Raack, W. (1971). István Szabó 65 Jahre. Aus Theorie und Praxis der Ingenieurwissenschaften: 1-3. Ernst & Sohn: Berlin. P}

_{Raack, W. (1980). Prof. Dr.-Ing. István Szabó. Der Bauingenieur 55(3): 197-198. Szabó, I. (1954). Einführung in die technische Mechanik. Springer: Berlin. Szabó, I. (1956). Höhere technische Mechanik. Springer: Berlin.}

_{Szabó, I. (1976). Geschichte der mechanischen Prinzipien. Birkhäuser: Basel.}

_{Trostel, R., Zimmermann, P. (1971). Aus Theorie und Praxis der Ingenieurwissenschaften: Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Herrn Prof. Dr.-Ing. István Szabó. Ernst&Sohn: Berlin.}

_{Trostel, R. (1976). István Szabó 70 Jahre. Die Bautechnik 53(12): 430.}