Acta Technica 45. (1964)
1-2. szám - Árpád Nádai, 1883–1963
ÁRPÁD NÁD AI The world famous scientist Árpád NÁdai, of Hungarian birth, died in Pittsburgh on the 17th of July 1963 at the age of 80. Á. NÁdai was born in Budapest April the 3rd 1883. Having graduated in Budapest, he went in 1901 to the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule at Zurich where the lectures of Prof. A. Stodola, also of Hungarian birth, were chiefly of influence on him. After obtaining his Degree as Mechanical Engineer in 1906, he returned to Budapest, where he was employed by the Machine Plant Schlick. Later in 1907—08 he became designing engineer in Munich. The first period of his scientific activity was the time he spent in Berlin between the years 1909—1912 where he became assistant professor resp. scientific co-worker beside Prof. Eugen Meyer. Here he wrote in 1911 his dissertation: Untersuchungen der Festigkeitslehre mit Hilfe des thermoelektrischen Temperaturmessverfahrens. It is from this period that his first noteworthy paper originates dealing with the problems of rectangular plates loaded by distributed forces, for which he worked out a method using rapidly convergent, simple infinite series instead of double ones. At the same time he proved by experiments that the substitution of torsional moments by forces normal to the middle plane of the plate, as proposed by Lord Kelvin and P. G. Tait, was admissible. The second period of his scientific activity can be placed in the years following World War I, when in 1919 he obtained a post in Göttingen at the Mechanical Research Institute founded by Felix Klein. At that time the head of this Institute was Ludwig Prandtl, the world famous mechanical scientist, 1883-1963 Acta Techn. Hung. 45. (1964)