John W. Hutchinson

John W. Hutchinson (born April 10, 1939) is a renowned scholar in the field of applied mechanics, and has made seminal contributions to the mechanics of structures and mechanics of materials. He is a recipient of the Timoshenko Medal. He earned his doctoral degree from Harvard University in 1963, advised by Bernard Budiansky. He has been the author of very important and famous works about solid and fracture mechanics, among the others the so called HRR (Hutchinson-Rice-Rosengren) theory of elastic-plastic stress fields in power hardening materials, posing a miliar stone for the modern Non-Linear (or Elasto-Plastic) Fracture Mechanics (NLFM, EPFM, Hutchinson, 1968, and Rice and Rosengren, 1968). The starting point is the monotonic stress-strain constitutive law of many ductile solids undergoing uniaxial tension, i.e. the well known Ramberg-Osgood law.

It has been announced that Hutchinson has been selected as the 2012 winner of the Ludwig-Prandtl-Ring, the highest honor awarded by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Luft- und Raumfahrt.