Czech Engineering Society Names Prize after McCormick Professor Zdenek Bazant

The Czech Society for Mechanics has named an engineering prize after Czech-born Zdeněk P. Bažant, McCormick Institute Professor and Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University.

The Z.P. Bazant Prize for Engineering Mechanics will be awarded annually to the author of an article or series of articles on an original topic, a book, monograph, or PhD thesis. Czech persons residing anywhere in the world or persons residing in the Czech Republic during the time of their research are eligible.

Bažant, an alumnus of the Czech Technical University in Prague, is known as a world leader in the research on scaling in solid mechanics. He 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 also formulated a simple size effect law used for structural design and material characterization.

Bažant is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Rome), the Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering, the Engineering Academy of Czech Republic, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, and the Academia di Scienze e Lettere (Milan). He has received numerous honors, including the Timoshenko Medal and six honorary doctorates from universities in Boulder, Prague, Karlsruhe, Milan, Lyon, and Vienna.