Heinrich Hencky

Who was Heinrich Hencky?

Heinrich Hencky was a German engineer. Born in Ansbach, he studied civil engineering in Munich and received his PhD from the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt. In 1913, he joined a railway company in Kharkiv, Ukraine. On the outbreak of World War I he was interned. After the war he taught at Darmstadt, Dresden and at Delft in the Netherlands.

At Delft University of Technology he worked on slip-line theory, plasticity and rheology, for which he is best known.

In 1930 he went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in 1931 gave one of the first lectures on rheology. He returned to Delft and then to Germany. In 1936 he went to Russia, teaching at Kharkiv and Moscow.

Hencky died in a climbing accident at the age of 65.