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Egon Orowan
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Egon Orowan
Egon Orowan FRS (Hungarian: Orován Egon) (2 August 1902 – 3 August 1989) was a Hungarian-British physicist and metallurgist. He was key in introducing crystal dislocation into physics and understanding of how materials plastically deform under stress. According to György Marx, he was one of The Martians, a group of Jews born in Pest between 1890 and 1910 who shaped the 20th century's technology after moving to the West.
Orowan was born in the Óbuda district of Budapest in 1902. His parents were Josze (Josephine) Spitzer Ságvári and Berthold Orowan, a mechanical engineer and factory manager.
He attended the Staatsobergymnasium (Main Gimnázium) in District 9 of Budapest, graduating from high school in June 1920. In 1920 he went to the University of Vienna, where he studied chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, and physics for two years. After six months of mandatory apprenticeship done home in Hungary, he was admitted to the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (now Technische Universität Berlin), where he studied mechanical and then electrical engineering. Eventually he started his experiments in physics, where he became the assistant of Professor Richard Becker in 1928. He completed his master's in 1928 and his doctorate of engineering in 1933 on the fracture of mica.
Soon after Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Orowan, who was of Jewish descent, left his studies and career in Berlin and returned to Hungary.
In 1934, Orowan wrote his famous paper on dislocations. He had been doing the experiments, while still in Berlin, which supported the theory put forward in Becker's 1925 paper. In 1934, Orowan, roughly contemporarily with G. I. Taylor and Michael Polanyi, realized that the plastic deformation of ductile materials could be explained in terms of the theory of dislocations developed by Vito Volterra in 1905. Though the discovery was neglected until after World War II, it was critical in developing the modern science of solid mechanics.
In Hungary, he seemed to have experienced some difficulty in finding immediate employment and spent the next few years living with his mother and ruminating on his doctoral research. From 1936 to 1939, he worked for the Tungsram light bulbs manufacturer, where, with the help of Mihály (Michael) Polanyi, he developed a new process for the extraction of krypton from the air.
In 1937, aware of the imminence of war, Orowan accepted the invitation of Rudolf Peierls and moved to the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom where they worked together on the theory of fatigue. In 1939, he moved to the Cavendish Laboritory at University of Cambridge, where William Lawrence Bragg inspired his interest in x-ray diffraction. He worked on structural problems on merchant marine ships.
During World War II, he worked on problems of munitions production, particularly that of plastic flow during rolling. In 1944, he was central to the reappraisal of the causes of the loss of many Liberty ships during the war, identifying the critical issues of the notch sensitivity of poor quality welds and the aggravating effects of the extremely low temperatures of the North Atlantic.
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Egon Orowan
Egon Orowan FRS (Hungarian: Orován Egon) (2 August 1902 – 3 August 1989) was a Hungarian-British physicist and metallurgist. He was key in introducing crystal dislocation into physics and understanding of how materials plastically deform under stress. According to György Marx, he was one of The Martians, a group of Jews born in Pest between 1890 and 1910 who shaped the 20th century's technology after moving to the West.
Orowan was born in the Óbuda district of Budapest in 1902. His parents were Josze (Josephine) Spitzer Ságvári and Berthold Orowan, a mechanical engineer and factory manager.
He attended the Staatsobergymnasium (Main Gimnázium) in District 9 of Budapest, graduating from high school in June 1920. In 1920 he went to the University of Vienna, where he studied chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, and physics for two years. After six months of mandatory apprenticeship done home in Hungary, he was admitted to the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (now Technische Universität Berlin), where he studied mechanical and then electrical engineering. Eventually he started his experiments in physics, where he became the assistant of Professor Richard Becker in 1928. He completed his master's in 1928 and his doctorate of engineering in 1933 on the fracture of mica.
Soon after Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Orowan, who was of Jewish descent, left his studies and career in Berlin and returned to Hungary.
In 1934, Orowan wrote his famous paper on dislocations. He had been doing the experiments, while still in Berlin, which supported the theory put forward in Becker's 1925 paper. In 1934, Orowan, roughly contemporarily with G. I. Taylor and Michael Polanyi, realized that the plastic deformation of ductile materials could be explained in terms of the theory of dislocations developed by Vito Volterra in 1905. Though the discovery was neglected until after World War II, it was critical in developing the modern science of solid mechanics.
In Hungary, he seemed to have experienced some difficulty in finding immediate employment and spent the next few years living with his mother and ruminating on his doctoral research. From 1936 to 1939, he worked for the Tungsram light bulbs manufacturer, where, with the help of Mihály (Michael) Polanyi, he developed a new process for the extraction of krypton from the air.
In 1937, aware of the imminence of war, Orowan accepted the invitation of Rudolf Peierls and moved to the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom where they worked together on the theory of fatigue. In 1939, he moved to the Cavendish Laboritory at University of Cambridge, where William Lawrence Bragg inspired his interest in x-ray diffraction. He worked on structural problems on merchant marine ships.
During World War II, he worked on problems of munitions production, particularly that of plastic flow during rolling. In 1944, he was central to the reappraisal of the causes of the loss of many Liberty ships during the war, identifying the critical issues of the notch sensitivity of poor quality welds and the aggravating effects of the extremely low temperatures of the North Atlantic.
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