Victor Vâlcovici

The first-ever call from Bucharest to New York City, on December 25, 1931. Vâlcovici is first from the left, followed by Dimitrie I. Ghika, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Grigore Filipescu, president of the Romanian Telephone Company

Victor Vâlcovici ( – 21 June 1970) was a Romanian mechanician and mathematician.

Biography Born into a modest family in Galați, he graduated first in his class in 1904 from Nicolae Bălcescu High School in Brăila. Entering the University of Bucharest on a scholarship, he attended its faculty of sciences, where he had as teachers Spiru Haret and Gheorghe Țițeica. After graduating in 1907 with a degree in mathematics, he taught high school for two years before leaving for University of Göttingen on another scholarship to pursue a doctorate in mathematics. He wrote his thesis under the direction of Ludwig Prandtl and defended it in 1913; the thesis, titled Ueber die diskontinuierliche Flussigkeitsbewegungen mit zwei freien Strahlen (Discontinuous flow of liquids in two free dimensions), amplified upon the work of Bernhard Riemann. In 1921, he became rector of the Polytechnic School of Timișoara. There, he was also professor of rational mechanics and founded a laboratory dedicated to the field.

Elected a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy in 1936, he was stripped of his membership by the new communist regime in 1948, but made a titular member of the Romanian Academy in 1965. His numerous articles on theoretical and applied mechanics covered topics such as the principles of variational mechanics, the mechanics of ideal fluid flow, the theory of elasticity and astronomy.

He died in 1970 in Bucharest, and was buried in the city's Bellu Cemetery. Streets have been named after Victor Vâlcovici in Brăila, Galați, and Timișoara; a school in Galați also bears his name.

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