Walter Noll

Who is Walter Noll?

Walter Noll is a mathematician, and Professor Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University. He is best known for developing mathematical tools of classical mechanics and thermodynamics.

Born in Berlin, Germany, Noll had his school education in a suburb of Berlin. In 1954, Noll earned a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Indiana University under Clifford Truesdell. His thesis "On the Continuity of the Solid and Fluid States" was published both in Journal of Rational Mechanics and Analysis and in one of Truesdell's books. Noll thanks Jerald Ericksen for his critical input to the thesis.

Noll has served as a visiting professor at the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Karlsruhe, the Israel Institute of Technology, the École Polytechnique in Nancy, the University of Pisa, the University of Pavia, and the University of Oxford.

In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.