Felix Jasiński

When he was 16 he passed his university entrance examination in Warsaw and in 1877 passed examinations for the St.Petersburg Institute of Engineers of Ways of Communication. From 1877 to 1890 Jasiński worked as an engineer on the St.Petersburg-Warsaw Railway in Pskow, thereafter in Vilna (today: Vilnius) and from 1888 onwards in St.Petersburg, where in 1890 he took charge of the Technical Building Department of the St.Petersburg-Moscow Railway. While in this position he greatly influenced the construction of the permanent way, bridges and stations and was held in high esteem by railway engineers. At the same time, he was looking into the theory of structures. In 1894 his contribution to buckling theory earned him a scientific degree comparable with a doctorate, and after 1895 he worked part-time at the St.Petersburg Institute of Engineers of Ways of Communication where one year later he was appointed visiting professor. A dispute between Jasiński and Engesser about inelastic buckling was published in a Swiss building journal in 1895 [Nowak, 1981, pp.147-148]. Four years later Jasiński was planning to return to Warsaw when tuberculosis took its toll. He therefore died in St.Petersburg but was buried in the town of his birth. According to the writings of Timoshenko, Jasiński’s lectures at the Institute of Engineers of Ways of Communication were original, comprehensible, interesting and masterly [Timoshenko, 2006].

Main contributions to structural analysis:

Opyt razvitiya teorii prodol’nogo izgiba (research into buckling theory) [1893]; O soprotivlenii prodol’nomu izgibu (on buckling strength) [1894]; Recherches sur la flexion des piéces comprimées [1894]; Sobranie sochinenii (collected works) [1902-04] Pisma [1961] 

Source: Kurrer, Karl-Eugen The History of the Theory of Structures, Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH, Berlin (Deutschland), ISBN 3-433-01838-3, 2008; p. 739