Zdeněk P. Bažant Elected to Royal Society

Zdeněk P. Bažant is one of 10 foreign members and 47 fellows elected this year to the Royal Society of London from a pool of approximately 700 candidates. The existing fellows elect Royal Society fellows through a peer review process. Among the 10 new foreign members, Bažant is the only engineer. There are seven biologists, one physicist, and one chemist. Eight are from the United States, and three are women.

The inauguration will be held in London on July 10, 2015. In the field of theoretical, applied and computational mechanics, and structural and materials engineering, Bažant will join three existing US foreign members J.R. Rice, T.J.R. Hughes, and J.W. Hutchinson.

Bažant is the McCormick Institute Professor and Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering.

One of just a few top-cited researchers in his field, Bažant is best known for his discovery of the scaling law for the energetic size effect in quasibrittle structural failure. His groundbreaking work has resulted in better understanding of scaling of structural strength, creep and hygrothermal effects, structural stability, finite strain, material damage models based on nano- and micro-mechanics, impact mechanics, fracture mechanics and probabilistic mechanics, with applications to bridges, nuclear containments and other concrete structures, fiber composites for ships and aircraft, and for car crashworthiness, rocks, gas shale, sea ice, thin films, and bone.

Throughout his career, Bažant has received numerous awards and honors, including election into the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academia Europaea, the Austrian, Czech, Italian and Spanish national academies; seven honorary doctorates; the Timoshenko, Nadai, and Warner Medals of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the von Karman, Newmark, Biot, Mindlin and Croes Medals of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Prager Medal from the Society of Engineering Science, and many more. He is an honorary member of ASME, ASCE, American Concrete Institute, and RILEM. Last January, ASCE established a new medal named Zdeněk P. Bažant Medal for Failure and Damage Prevention.

Founded in 1660, the Royal Society is a self-governing honorific society gathering many of the world’s most distinguished scientists, drawn from all areas of science, engineering, and medicine. It recognizes, promotes, and supports excellence in science and encourages the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity.