Wilhelm Flügge
German engineer (1904–1990)
Gottfried Wilhelm Flügge (March 18, 1904 – March 19, 1990) was a German engineer, and Professor of Applied Mechanics at Stanford University. He is known as recipient of the 1970 Theodore von Karman Medal in Engineering Mechanics, and the 1970 Worcester Reed Warner Medal.
In 1934 Flügge published his most noted work Statik und Dynamik der Schalen in German, in 1960 translated into English, entitled Stresses in shells. In those days this work evolved into the international standard work on shell theory.
As Gere et al. (2004) put it, that work "served as the handbook for designers of concrete roofs, pressure vessels for storage and power generation, as well as aircraft, and served as the established point of departure for countless analytical and experimental research investigations. Even after numerous other texts on the subject have appeared, this book continues to occupy the position of primary reference."
Biography
Youth, education and early career
Flügge was born in Greiz in the Free State of Thuringia, now Germany in 1904, where his father was a minister in the Protestant church. His younger brother was the theoretical physicist Siegfried Flügge (1912–1997). After completing the gymnasium in Dresden in 1921, he obtained his Dipl.-Ing. in civil engineering in 1925 at the Technische Hochschule Dresden, now Dresden University of Technology.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Wilhelm Flügge” as german engineer (1904–1990). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as german engineer (1904–1990). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2572670. VIAF identifies the subject as 11087163. The Library of Congress control number is n50004376. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1904, 1990, 1970 and 1934.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Wilhelm Flügge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.