IMechE’s Tribology Gold Medal 2022 Winner Announced

Dr Bo Persson has been awarded the Institution’s Gold Medal for Tribology.

Bo Persson was born in Sweden and studied Physics at Chalmers University in Gőteborg, obtaining his PhD on the dynamical processes at surfaces in 1980. He undertook postdoctoral work at the Forschungszentrum Julich, and at the IBM Yorktown Heights Research Lab before returning to Julich in 1983.

Bo Persson has written a seminal book on tribology, Sliding Friction: Physical Principle and Applications, which appeared in the late 1990s. He has also been awarded several prizes such as, the Volvo prize in 1980, the prestigious Walter Schottky Award of the German Physical Society in 1996, and the John Yarwood Memorial Medal in 1997 for his contributions to surface physics.

In 2000 he wrote the paper Theory of rubber friction and contact mechanics, which turned out to be very fundamental. The Persson Theory has found applications in several important areas such as contact mechanics of layered materials, rubber friction, leak-rate of seals and contact phenomena on human skin.

The institution would like to congratulate Dr Bo Persson on winning the Tribology Gold medal.

View Bo Persson's full citation