R Rabotnov, Yuri Nikolaevich Holm Altenbach 1 and Evgeniy V. Lomakin 2 1 Lehrstuhl Technische Mechanik, Institut für Mechanik, Fakultät für Maschinenbau, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany 2 Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, Department of Theory of Plasticity, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia Yuri Nikolayevich Rabotnov (February 24, 1914, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Empire; May 13, 1985, Moscow, Soviet Union) was an outstanding scientist in the field of mechanics of solids. He was the author of substantial results in almost all branches of strength of materials: loss of stability of inelastic systems under complex stress state, fracture and damage mechanics, theory of plasticity, hereditary theory of creep, applied mathematics, shell theory, mechanics of com- posite materials, wave propagation in inelastic solids, and experimental mechanics. He always confirmed all theoretical results with experimen- tal studies. Family and Education Yuri Nikolayevich Rabotnov was born in Nizhny Novgorod, where his family was living, and he spent there his childhood studying at gymnasium. Yuri Nikolayevich Rabotnov His father, Nikolay Dmitrijevich Rabotnov, has been employed as a teacher at Nizhny Novgorod Polytechnic Institute; he was a member of St. Petersburg Astronomical Society and inculcated the interest of his son to the exact sciences. His mother Elizaveta Ivanovna Rabotnova was bring- ing up the son and kept the house. She belonged to the gentry, and according to the gentry tradi- tions, she knew perfectly French, as it was her native language, and her son inherited the interest to the study of foreign languages. In France he delivered the lectures in splendid French, in the United States and Canada in English, and in Germany in German. The love for languages was a property of his excellently organized brain. He told that he studied different languages, as logical problems are usually solved, consider- ing specific regularities and relations. In 1930 Rabotnov, being 16, left the secondary school, went to Moscow, and entered the Lomonosov Moscow State University. He met his wife, Irina Timofeevna, later in Novosibirsk, who became © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020 H. Altenbach, A. Öchsner (eds.), Encyclopedia of Continuum Mechanics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-55771-6