Clarkson University Awards Honorary Degree to Zdeněk P. Bažant

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Clarkson University proudly announces it awarded Zdeněk P. Bažant an honorary doctor of science degree at its spring 2026 Commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 9.

Bažant is a distinguished Northwestern University professor and researcher whose work in civil and mechanical engineering, materials science and applied mechanics has produced key innovations in fracture mechanics, safety analysis, material reliability, probabilistic mechanics, finite strain analysis of damage in hard and soft materials and high-temperature performance, with applications ranging from construction and nuclear plants to automotive and aerospace engineering, ice breaking, hydraulic fracturing and deep CO2 sequestration.

Clarkson recognizes Bažant with an honorary degree for his pioneering contributions to the mechanics and safety of materials and structures, and for the lasting global impact of his research.

"Zdeněk Bažant's career reflects the kind of curiosity, rigor and impact we strive to inspire in our students every day," Clarkson University President Michelle Larson said. "His contributions have improved the safety and resilience of critical infrastructure across industries, and his influence on both research and practice exemplifies the far-reaching impact of engineering at its best."

Born and educated in Prague, Bažant earned a doctoral degree in engineering mechanics from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1963 and a postgraduate diploma in theoretical physics from Charles University in 1966.

Prior to joining Northwestern University in 1969 as an associate professor, he held appointments at the Czech Technical University, the Centre Expérimental de Recherches et d'Études du Bâtiment et des Travaux Publics (C.E.B.T.P.) in Paris, the University of Toronto and the University of California, Berkeley.

Bažant was the founding director of Northwestern's Center for Concrete and Geomaterials and has held the Walter P. Murphy Professorship since 1990 and simultaneously the McCormick Institute Professorship since 2000.

Bažant's connection to Clarkson includes his collaboration with Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor John Dempsey on research into size effects in sea ice fracture. In 1993 and 1994, Bažant participated in a project led by Dempsey and funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the National Research Council of Canada and Exxon. The research involved fracturing large, floating notched specimens of sea ice up to 1.79 meters thick and 80 by 80 meters in size under controlled displacement using flat jacks inserted into the notches.

The tests revealed that at larger scales-beginning around 10 meters horizontally-sea ice follows Bažant's size effect law, approaching the behavior predicted by linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM). The test results were transformative for the fracture analysis of sea ice, with important applications in submarine surfacing, load capacity estimation, force calculations on offshore structures, icebreaking operations, and predicting the formation of ice ridges and open-water leads in the Arctic.

Many of Bažant's contributions are now incorporated into U.S. and international design codes. Bažant is widely recognized for definitive analyses of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, and the excessive deflections and collapse of the world-record Koror-Babeldaob Bridge in Palau. His research has been applied by leading companies such as Boeing, Chrysler and Ford, improving the safety and performance of structures ranging from bridges and buildings to aircraft and car crashworthiness. His current research focuses on reducing catastrophic failure risks, advancing hydraulic fracturing methods and improving the durability of concrete.

Bažant has written nine books on a range of subjects. His work has received more than 109,000 citations, and his h-index is 160. He has mentored more than 66 doctoral students and holds five patents, including a 1959 patent for a safety-release ski binding, developed as a student, that is now exhibited at the New England Ski Museum in Franconia, New Hampshire.

In recent weighted citation studies by Elsevier and Stanford University published in Public Library of Science, Bažant was ranked first worldwide in civil engineering, second in all fields of engineering, and came within the top 0.0056 percent of six million scientists worldwide. He received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Humboldt Foundation, NATO, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Kajima Corp. and the Ford Foundation.

Bažant was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors, and the Royal Societies of London and Canada, among others. He has earned nine honorary doctorates, and the Timoshenko, von Karman, Nadai, Biot, l'Hermite and Newmark medals. The American Society of Civil Engineers awards the Bažant Medal for Fracture and Damage Prevention, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers awards the Bažant Medal for Mechanics. The Bažant Prize for Mechanics is awarded in Czechia. In 2013, Bažant received the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art from the President of Austria.

Specifically, Bazant's contributions of permanent value include:

• Size effect law for quasibrittle fracture, now widely used for concrete and composites and incorporated into the American Concrete Institute (ACI) design code governing concrete construction;
• Size effect method of testing fracture energy and material length, which is now an international standard recommendation;
• Crack band model for the numerical simulation of distributed cracking, which is now a mainstay of predictions of quasi-brittle fracture and strength scaling in concrete and airframes;
• Age-adjusted effective modulus method for creep and a drying model for concrete, both incorporated into design codes in the United States and Europe;
• "Microplane" damage constitutive law that now runs on large wave codes in federal labs and various commercial software;
• Concrete creep laws accounting for aging, solidification, nano-microprestress and hygrothermal effects, now incorporated into ACI and international standard recommendations;
• Model for fracture and size effect in fiber composites, which is used in design for crashworthiness of cars and airframes;
• Stable testing method for fracture softening in fiber composites, for which he and four co-inventors secured a US patent;
• The Gauss-Weibull distribution and the "fishnet" tail distribution of strength of quasi-brittle and architected materials needed to ensure required safety;
• A model for high-temperature creep, fracture and moisture transport in concrete, widely used in nuclear plant safety assessments and in analyzing fire effects in tunnels and buildings;
• A thermodynamically correct numerical analysis of stability and stress increments in inelastic solids under large deformations;
• Invention (with three co-workers) of the "gap test," which revealed a major effect of crack-parallel stress on fracture energy across a wide range of materials, including concrete, rock, composites and atomistic lattices, earning Bažant the Murray Medal from the Society for Experimental Mechanics
• Various mathematical results, such as an improved numerical integration formula for a spherical surface, criteria for wave diffraction in non-uniform finite element meshes, stress singularity at the intersection of crack front edge with body surface; criteria for the stability of propagating crack systems and for branching of hydraulic cracks in shale, the isotherm of water sorption in gradually filling nanopores; and the theory of unsaturated nanoporomechanics.

Bažant was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Royal Society of London, and national academies of seven other countries.

He has received nine honorary doctorates in the United States and abroad, along with numerous awards, including the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, the American Society for Composites Outstanding Research Award and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Medal. He has also received top honors from the Applied Mechanics Division of ASME (Timoshenko Medal), the Engineering Mechanics Division of the American Society of Civil Engineers (von Karman Medal) and the Society of Engineering Science (Prager Medal), of which he served as president.