Richard B. Hetnarski

He is the founder (with Naotake Noda) and president until 2020 of the International Congresses on Thermal Stresses (ICTS). These Congresses are held every two years consecutively on three continents, that is, in Asia, America, Europe. The first meeting was held June 5–7, 1995 in Hamamatsu, Japan at Shizuoka University and second was held June 8–11, 1997 in Rochester, New York, U. S.A. at Rochester Institute of Technology. These were titled First and Second International Symposium on Thermal Stresses and Related Topics, respectively. The name International Symposium on Thermal Stresses and Related Topics was changed to International Congress on Thermal Stresses with the meeting in Cracow, Poland at Cracow University of Technology on June 13–17, 1999. In 2002 the International Congresses on Thermal Stresses (ICTS) became an Affiliated Organization of International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM).

He has been active in teaching, research, publishing, translating, and editing. He is the author of many papers on Mechanics and Mathematics. His latest paper, on Constant Force Spring System with a Spiral was published in the ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics in 2020 when he was 92 years old.

He has been known for his deeply pro-democracy convictions.  In 1989, when the Communist government in Poland was collapsing, he gave a number of presentations on the subject at three TV network affiliates of NBC, ABC, and CBS. When Lech Wałęsa, Nobel Peace Prize winner and former president of Poland, visited Rochester Institute of Technology in February 1998, he and Wałęsa had a discussion on the political situation in Poland, later described in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 22, 1998 edition.

In 1979, he held a summer faculty fellowship at the NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Then, in September, 1979, he taught a UNESCO sponsored course at the International Centre for Mechanical Sciences (CISM) in Udine, Italy. Subsequently, he became a NASA employee as an aeronautical engineer, and worked at NASA in Cleveland until the end of January 1980. Later, he spent five months as Visiting Professor at the University of Paderborn in Germany.

In 1978, he founded the Journal of Thermal Stresses, and he was its editor-in-chief for 40 years (1978-2018), and is now its Honorary Editor. He served (1988-1991) as an Associate Editor of Applied Mechanics Reviews.

In 1969, he and his family emigrated from Poland to the United States, and he became Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, for the year 1969-1970. He became a United States naturalized citizen in 1974. From 1970 until 1998, he held positions in the Department of mechanical engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology, first as New York State Science and Technology Foundation Distinguished Visiting Professor (1970-1971), then as Professor (1971-1992), and finally as James E. Gleason Professor (1992-1998). Since 1998, he has been Professor Emeritus.

In Poland, he worked at the Institute of Aviation in Warsaw (1955-1959), and also at the Institute of Fundamental Technological Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (1959-1969). In the years 1964-1965, he held post-doctorate fellowships at Columbia University in New York and at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Richard B. Hetnarski was born in Stopnica, Poland. He received an M.S. degree in mechanical engineering at Gdańsk University of Technology in Poland in 1952; an M.S. degree in mathematics at the University of Warsaw in 1960; and a Doctor of Technical Sciences degree at the Institute of Fundamental Technological Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw in 1964, mostly under the tutelage of Professor Witold Nowacki. In his career he concentrated his research on Solid Body Mechanics.

Richard B. Hetnarski (born May 31, 1928) is a Polish American and a professor emeritus in the department of mechanical engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology. He has been an ASME Fellow since 1983 and a New York State Licensed Professional Engineer since 1976. He is best known for his contributions to the fields of Thermal Stresses and Themoelasticity.