Zdenek Bazant elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

April 30, 2008

Zdeněk P. Bažant, McCormick Institute Professor and Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University, was in April elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious honorary societies and independent policy research centers.

This year, 212 scholars, scientists, artists, civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders were elected from 20 states, 15 countries, more than 50 universities and more than a dozen corporations, as well as museums, national laboratories and private research institutes, media outlets and foundations.

Bažant discovered the non-statistical (energetic) size effect on the strength structures consisting of brittle heterogeneous materials such as concrete, fiber composites, tough ceramics, rock, sea ice, rigid foams, and many materials on approach to nano-scale. He formulated a simple size effect law used for structural design and material characterization. He is known as a world leader in the research on scaling in solid mechanics.

Bažant has already been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Rome), the Engineering Academy of Czech Republic, and the Academia di Scienze e Lettere (Milan). He has also received six honorary doctorates from universities in Boulder, Prague, Karlsruhe, Milan, Lyon, and Vienna.

"The Academy honors excellence by electing to membership remarkable men and women who have made preeminent contributions to their fields and to the world," said Academy President Emilio Bizzi. "We are pleased to welcome into the Academy these new members to help advance our founders' goal of 'cherishing knowledge and shaping the future."

The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on October 11 at the Academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.