How I met and grew up with Horst Nowacki

How I met and grew up with Horst Nowacki

I came to Berlin to study naval architecture back in July 1967, close after my 18th birthday and my graduation from the German High-School in Athens (Deutsch Schule Athen). It is a long story to tell about the way I managed to enroll at the Technical University of Berlin (TUB) for studies in naval architecture without knowing at that time even one person in Berlin, nor I had the formal prerequisite of 3 months practical training completed prior to starting my engineering studies at TUB.

July 1967; first days in Berlin (at Siegmundshof dormitory)

However, thanks to the support of a very helpful student advisor of TUB in my first steps and my student fellows at the drafting halls of naval architecture (Jan Schütte Saal), I managed to get a place at the dormitory of TUB to stay and to start my 5 yrs. diploma of engineering studies in naval architecture at TUB in October 1967. The way I managed to get my 3 months practical training at VWS Berlin (the ship model basin of Berlin, near my dormitory) without any local support (just “knocking the door of the VWS director”) is another story to tell, not of relevance herein.

With the completion of my pre-diploma studies in April 1970, I got my first academic job as Tutor at the chair of Ship Theory, advising students in ship stability and ship lines drawing. It was the same chair where Horst Nowacki did his PhD about 10 years earlier under the supervision of Professor Hans Amtsberg, the chair of Ship Theory. Horst Nowacki was in the meantime at the University of Michigan, Professor of Computer-Aided Ship Design.

I received my diploma degree in early 1973 and was appointed Wissenschaftlicher Assistent at the Chair of Ship Theory, supporting education and research in the field, in parallel to my PhD studies. The Chair of Ship Theory was at that time vacant, because of the retirement of Professor Hans Amtsberg. The department underwent during this period also a restructuring, in line with a new Law for universities’ reorganization in Berlin. The vacant position of the chair of Ship Theory was to be filled by somebody in the new field of Computer Aided Ship Design (CASD). I could follow closely these developments as representative of the scientific staff in the departmental directorate and even as member of the electoral body for the appointment of the vacant position.

In summer 1974 I first met Horst Nowacki giving a summer course on CASD at TUB. I worked in a team on a CASD case study that was an entirely new field for me, as for many others. I was lucky to have started computer programming for the needs of my diploma study few years earlier, while the first mainframe computer could be widely used by students of TUB since the early 70ties. A few months later Horst Nowacki was appointed Professor of Ship Design at TUB and the Chair of Ship Theory, where I was working, was renamed Fachgebiet für Schiffsentwurf (Section of Ship Design).

The new Section of Ship Design kept in its portfolio “Ship Dynamics” (seakeeping and maneuvering) from the former Chair of Ship Theory. This was particularly important for me, as my PhD on nonlinear seakeeping, could now run under the supervision of Horst Nowacki, while noting that his PhD was originally also in ship hydrodynamics.

The staff of the old Chair of Ship Theory moved to the new spaces of the Section of Ship Design in Salzufer 17-19, sometime in 1975 and after some time we could sit down and take our time to peacefully talk about the organization of the section, the running PhDs etc.

Relaxing meeting with staff of our section at some park in Berlin (visible: from left to right: Dirk Reese; Frau Kujanek (secretary of Horst Nowacki), Christian Schubert; Wolfgang Jonas, APAP standing).

We were all impressed by the smooth, polite and pleasant personality of Horst Nowacki who took his time to talk with everybody of us, listening and advising us on the way ahead. We soon came to discuss my PhD progress that formally started with my appointment as Wissenschaftlicher Assistent in Ship Theory back in 1973. It was about a second-order theory for seakeeping (2D problem). At that time this problem was addressed worldwide by only 2 other researchers in the US, namely C. M. Lee (DTMB) and Roger Potash (Univ. Berkeley). I started working on this subject first without any supervision, just by studying published papers that I found in the TUB library. The subject intrigued me during my diploma thesis with late Prof. Erich Wolf (Ship Structures), when studying wave forces on ocean structures by steep (nonlinear) waves. During my early studies I found an inconsistency in the published paper of C.M. Lee that I could not rationally explain.  Horst Nowacki showed immediately interest to clarify this and wrote a letter to C.M. Lee. He contacted also Professor Francis Ogilvie (MIT) on the matter, whom he knew from his Michigan time. I had the feeling, he knew everybody of importance in our field; it was a grand seigneur standing next to me, I realized this many more times in the years to come!

It proved that I have found a mistake in the formulation of C. M. Lee (Francis Ogilvie confirmed that few weeks later, when visiting us in Berlin) and this encouraged me to continue my research, now with the forceful support of Horst Nowacki. The outcome was very rewarding, as proved in the years to come! I defended my PhD in June 1977, what we celebrated with 40 “Schweinshaxen” from Aschinger (famous old restaurant in Berlin), 24 red “Krim-Sekt” bottles and Greek pastries that brought my parents from Athens.

In front of the Institute f. Schiffs- und Meerestechnik der TUB (v. l.: Father late Dimitris Papanikolaou, Sylvia Papanikolaou, APAP, Horst Nowacki, June, 1977)

With the completion of my PhD, my contract with TUB as WA was finished in 1978 and Horst Nowacki took care for me to continue my research in the area through a DFG (German Research Foundation) research project that was an extension of my PhD. Horst Nowacki was promoting this research now both in national fora and the international scientific community. This enabled me to get to know in person many important personalities in the field, both in Germany, Professors Grim, Wendel and Söding in Hamburg, and all over the world, Professors Tasai and Maruo in Japan, Wehausen, Newman and Ogilvie, in USA, to mention very few of them of importance to my PhD work. An important step forward in my development came just 2 years later, in 1980, when Horst Nowacki and me presented our research at the 13th Symposium on Naval Hydrodynamics in Tokyo, a very prestigious event for naval hydrodynamicists with hard competition in the paper acceptance.

Papanikolaou, Α., and Nowacki, Η., “Second-Order Theory of Oscillating Cylinders in a Regular Steep Wave”, Proc. 13th ONR Symposium, Tokyo, 1980, pp. 303-333

Because the flight ticket Berlin to Tokyo proved to be more expensive than a round-the-world ticket offered at that time by Pan-American Airlines, we took latter ticket on the condition of a minimum 5 stops on the route.

We started in September 1980 this 6-week trip around the world, with stops in New Delhi, Bangkok, Hong-Kong, Tokyo, Honolulu, San Francisco, New York, Frankfurt, back to Berlin. It was the time when we came very close with Horst Nowacki, teaching me how to travel and to operate as a man with experience in all respects! One thing that Horst Nowacki organized during this trip was a series of lectures on our trip, thus me giving presentations about my research at various institutions that we visited beyond the ONR Symposium in Tokyo. In that respect I could present my work in Osaka Univ., Hiroshima Univ., Kyushu Univ. in Japan and on the way back in Honolulu, Univ. of Hawaii, San Francisco, Univ. of Berkeley, Stevens Institute in New Jersey. It should be noted that at that time my English was really poor, while Horst Nowacki helped me in the preparation of the script for the ONR presentation and taught me how to present things. An invaluable lesson by a master in the field! Needless to say, that I had the chance to meet in person all experts in the field during this trip and I gained many friends especially in Japan that continue until today!