Prager, William (1903 - 1980)
Role: Professor of Applied Mathematics, Professor of Engineering and Applied MechanicsDates: 1941 - 1973
Portrait Location: Pierce House Pierce Hse 110 (182 Geo)
Artist: Klenk, W. (b. 1930)
Portrait Date: 1973
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 35 1/2
Framed Dimensions: 44 1/2
Brown Portrait Number: 242
Brown Historical Property Number: 983
Professor William Prager was an internationally known scholar of Applied Mathematics and the first director of Brown University's program of Advanced Instruction and Research in Mechanics. A German with anti-Nazi views, Prager's move to Brown University in 1941 was an international undertaking.
Prager was born in Karlsruhe, Germany, on May 23, 1903. He completed his education in Germany at the Institute of Technology in Darmstad, and was awarded his Doctor of Engineering in 1926. A year earlier, in 1925, he was awarded with a Diploma in Engineering from the same institute and married Ann Heyer. After completing his degree they remained in Darmsted where he continued to do research. In 1929 Prager was appointed Acting Director of the Institute of Applied Mechanics in Gottingen and three years later he became Professor at the Institute of Technology back in Karlsruhe, the city where he was born. In addition to his work as a professor, Prager also worked as a consultant to the Fiesler Aircraft Company in Kassel.
In the early 1930s Prager was already a recognized expert in the theories of elasticity and plasticity as well as in the statics and dynamics of structures. But in 1933, the year Hitler came to power, he was dismissed from the Institute of Technology in Karlsruhe for his anti-Nazi views. Prager successfully sued the German government, winning a year's back pay and an offer to return to his work, but by this time he felt it best to leave Germany and relocated to Turkey. At the age of 30 he was so well known he was offered a Professorship of Mechanics at Istanbul University that allowed him four years to learn Turkish. He learned the language in two years and even wrote four research texts in Turkish.
In 1941 Brown University was starting a program of Advanced Instruction and Research in Mechanics. A director was needed and Dean Roland G. D. Richardson of the Graduate School, himself a mathematician, wanted William Prager. President Wriston (BP 150 & 182) was willing to bring Prager to Brown, sight unseen, to develop the new department. It was likewise in Prager's interest to leave Europe with the ongoing expansion of World War II. But Prager was a German citizen of military age, and it was not easy for him to escape Europe. Prager was not able to travel through German-held territories. Moreover, he had difficulty in obtaining a US visa, as he had relatives still in Germany.
When Germany attacked Russia Prager's planned itinerary, which was to take him and his family via Odessa to Japan to San Francisco, was out. A telegram sent to his colleague at Brown, Otto Neugebaue, highlighted the seriousness of the situation:
"US Visa Cancelled / Cabled Details Dean / Furniture Sold / Position Resigned / Situation Here Expected Deteriorate Soon / Impossible Stay for Czechoslovakians / Implore Help / Willy."
Prager, his wife, and 12-year-old son finally traveled by train to Baghdad, by plane to Karachi, India, and by ship from Bombay, around Capetown, and then to New York. It was a forty-day journey that brought them to the United States in November 1941, only weeks before the entrance of the United States into World War II.
Then next stop was Providence, Rhode Island, and Brown University, where Prager assembled a world-famous group, drawing on many Europeans, to develop the Applied Mathematics Division at Brown. Prager served as the Division's first chairman. Prager's research covered an enormous diversity of topics including all types of mechanics of continua, application of computers to problems in engineering and economics, problems of traffic flow. He covered a whole range of pioneering work in applied mechanics.
Prager was recognized at Brown University for his outstanding work and designated the first Chairman of the Physical Sciences Council and the L. Herbert Ballou University Professor. He was also the founder of the Quarterly of Applied Mathematics; the first issue appeared in April, 1943. Prager continued to serve as editor until 1965. That year he left Brown to become Professor of Applied Mechanics at the University of California, San Diego, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
Three years later Prager returned to Brown to be named University Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Mechanics. At his own request Prager taught the freshman engineering course until his 1973 retirement. He explained, "The challenge with older students is to open their minds to new viewpoints. But, freshmen, ah, they are a pleasure to instruct."
He was awarded the Worcester Reed Warner and Timoshenko Medals by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
After his retirement Prager and his wife moved back to Europe and lived in Savognin, Switzerland. He maintained an extensive research activity and continued both to lecture and to serve as editor of Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering . In 1974 Prager was elected Correspondent of Academie des Sciences de l'Institut de France, the highest honor in France for a scientist who is not a French citizen.
William Prager died in Zurich, Switzerland, on March 16, 1980.
Prager's portrait was painted in 1973, the year he retired, by the artist William C. Klenk. Klenk was born in 1930. He is a Professor of Art at the University of Rhode Island. Klenk works with painting, drawing, portraiture and collages using both mixed- and multi-media. Professor Klenk received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Miami University and thereafter was awarded a Master of Arts and a Doctoral in Drawing/Painting from Ohio State University.
In 1960 Klenk exhibited at the Annual exhibition of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, established in 1805. He was featured in a 2003 solo-exhibition at the University of Rhode Island.