Jack Cermak Wins the Otto Flachsbart Medal
The wind-engineering societies of Austria, Switzerland and Germany, collectively organized as Windtechnologische Gesellschaft (WTG), have bestowed on Dr. Jack Cermak the prestigious Otto Flachsbart Medal. This is only the second time that the WTG has issued this honor (the first recipient was Prof. Alan Davenport of the University of Western Ontario).
The WTG has honored Prof. Jack Cermak with this award for a lifetime of research work that has “laid major foundations for the science of wind engineering”.
A Cermak Lecture was held in his honor at the WTG Workshop held in Braunschweig, Germany, in November, 2007.
Read more about Dr. Jack Cermak
About Otto Flachsbart
The award is named after Otto Flachsbart, who was one of Ludwig Prandtl’s scholars at the Kaiser Wilhelm-Institut in Gottingen where he performed pioneering work in wind-loading research. In 1932 he became a Professor of Structural Mechanics at the University of Hannover. In 1937 he was forced by the regime to give up his position. Shortly after, he became the director for research of a German steel manufacturer. In this position he survived and returned to academia immediately after the war in 1945. He served his university as a rector and his country as a Secretary of State for Science and Education. Flachsbart passed away in 1957. He is considered a scholar who stood for joining science and technology with true humaneness.
