Ioannis Argyris

Education He was born in Volos, Greece but the family moved to Athens where he was educated in the Classical Gymnasium.

He studied civil engineering for four years at the National Technical University of Athens and then at the Technische Hochschule München (now Technical University of Munich), receiving his Engineering Diploma in 1936.

Following his escape from Nazi Germany he completed his Doctorate at ETH Zurich in 1942.

Career His first job was at the Gollnow company in Stettin, where he was involved among other things in high radio transmitter masts. In 1943, he joined the research department of the Royal Aeronautical Society in England. Starting from 1949 he was lecturer in aeronautical engineering at the Imperial College London of the University of London, where he assumed a chair in 1955.

In 1959, Argyris was appointed a professor at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart (today University of Stuttgart) and director of the Institute of Structural Mechanics and Dynamics in Aerospace Engineering. He created the Aeronautical and Astronautical Campus of the University of Stuttgart as focal point for applications of digital computers and electronics.

Argyris was involved in and developed to a large extent the Finite Element Method along with Ray William Clough and Olgierd Zienkiewicz after an early mathematical pre-working of Richard Courant.

Awards and honours Argyris was awarded the Royal Aeronautical Society Silver Medal in 1971 and an honorary Doctorate of Science in Maths from Athens University in 1989.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in March 1986.

Personal life When World War II started Argyris was in Berlin at the Technische Hochschule (now Technische Universität Berlin). He was arrested and accused of passing research secrets to the Allies. He was saved from execution by Admiral Canaris (thought to be of Greek descent, he was not) who arranged his escape. After swimming the Rhine during an air-raid, he made his way to Switzerland. There he entered ETH Zurich to complete his Doctorate.

Argyris died in Stuttgart and is buried in the Sankt Jörgens Cemetery in the city of Varberg, Sweden.

His mother's uncle, Constantin Carathéodory, was a Greek mathematician of the Modern Era.