Mathwar/Personlist/Prager William
William Prager
(* May 23rd 1903 in Karlsruhe, † March 16th 1980 in Zurich)
Life
In 1932 Prager was appointed as Professor of Technical Mechanics at Karlsruhe. As indication of just how rapid his success had been, we note that his appointment in Karlsruhe made him the youngest professor in Germany. It was certainly due to the leading international reputation he had already achieved, with over thirty papers and a book already showing the depth of his contributions to applied mathematics. However, life in Germany was about to change for on 30 January 1933 Hitler came to power. The Nazi regime forced Prager out of the professorship and in 1934 he left Germany to go to Turkey where he was appointed as Professor of Theoretical Mechanics at the University of Istanbul. But Prager did not accept his treatment by the Nazis without protest. He fought his dismissal through the German courts and, perhaps surprisingly, won his case. He accepted the back pay which the court awarded him to cover what his salary would have been if he had remained in post. He was also given permission to return to his professorship in Germany but he declined.
In Turkey Prager continued to output research at the highest level, publishing articles in German, Turkish, French and English. He also wrote textbooks in Turkish for his students, one on descriptive geometry and another on elementary mechanics. The outbreak of war in 1939 was distressing to Prager and the German advances by 1940 made him decide that he would be best placed if he could emigrate to the United States. This, however, was not easy at this difficult time, even for a scientist with the high international reputation enjoyed by Prager. Brown University, in Providence Rhode Island, took the opportunity to expand its graduate programme by offering Prager the position of Director of Advanced Instruction and Research in Mechanics. Prager had to remain in Turkey until October 1941, and then the journey from Istanbul to Providence, Rhode Island, took him and his family about six weeks. Travelling at this time was extremely difficult and they had to go by a very indirect route.