Aurel Stodola

Aurel Boleslav Stodola (11 May 1859 – 25 December 1942) was a Slovak engineer, physicist, and inventor. He was a pioneer in the area of technical thermodynamics and its applications and published his book Die Dampfturbine (the steam turbine) in 1903. In addition to the thermodynamic issues involved in turbine design the book discussed aspects of fluid flow, vibration, stress analysis of plates, shells and rotating discs and stress concentrations at holes and fillets. Stodola was a professor of mechanical engineering at the Swiss Polytechnical Institute (now ETH) in Zurich. He maintained friendly contact with Albert Einstein. In 1892, Stodola founded the Laboratory for Energy Conversion.