Bernard Budiansky

Bernard Budiansky, Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Engineering Emeritus and Gordon McKay Professor of Structural Mechanics Emeritus, died Saturday, Jan. 23, at his home in Lexington, Mass. He was 73.

Budiansky, a nationally known expert on how materials buckle, bend, and break under stress, came to Harvard in 1955 as an associate professor of structural mechanics. He was named the Gordon McKay Professor of Structural Mechanics in 1961 and given the title of the Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Engineering in 1983. He retired in 1995.

Before coming to Harvard, Budiansky worked for the precursor of NASA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). He worked as a research scientist there from 1944 to 1952. From 1952 until 1955, he headed NACA's structural mechanics branch, analyzing airplane components to determine how well they resisted buckling, cracking, and vibrating under the stress of high-altitude and high-speed flight.

He also advised NASA on the materials used in spaceflight, including materials used on the Apollo spacecraft.

In 1997, Budiansky was awarded the American Society for Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Medal for "eminently distinguished achievements and individual contributions which have led to the understanding of the connection between the macroscopic mechanical behavior of materials and its microstructure and microstructural rearrangements."

He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1973 and to the National Academy of Engineering in 1976, two of the highest honors given to U.S. scientists and engineers. He received an honorary doctor of science degree from Northwestern University in 1986 and was a foreign member of the Danish Center for Applied Mathematics and Mechanics and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Budiansky was born in New York City and received a bachelor's degree from City College, New York, in 1944. He received a master's degree from Brown in 1948 and a Ph.D. from Brown in 1950.

Budiansky is survived by his wife, Nancy; two sons, Michael of Albany, Calif., and Stephen of Leesburg, Va.; and four grandchildren.