About

He received a PhD in physics from the University of Vienna, Austria, in 1980, followed by a post-doctoral period at Cambridge University, UK. He was director of the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research and Professor at the University of Stuttgart (1990-2007). As visitor he worked at Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California, Santa Barbara and San Diego, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, and at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang. Arzt received, i.a., the Max Planck Research Award, the Acta Materialia Outstanding Paper Award, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (highest German Science Award), and an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). He is a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Arzt is Editor-in Chief of the leading review journal Progress in Materials Science.

In the dynamic behavior of materials, the unifying theme is the high rate at which events occur. He initiated this work in 1972 and defined in his now classic book, Dynamic Behavior of Materials (1994, ~2000 citations in google scholar). He entered the field of biological and bioinspired materials in 1997 with his work on abalone shell. His honors include Fellow, TMS, APS, and ASM, as well as awards in the US (APS Duvall, TMS Educator and Cohen, ASM Sauveur and White, Acta Materials and Society, SMD/TMS Distinguished Engineer/Scientist and Service Awards), Europe (Humboldt, DGM Heyn,  and DYMAT Rinehart  Awards), and China (Lee Hsung). He was the chair of the 2015 MOBT conference and spearheaded the Pan American Materials Conference Series. He is co-author (with Po-Yu Chen) of the book Biological Materials Science (CUP, 2014).

He received M.A., Ph.D. and Sc.D. degrees in materials science all from Cambridge University. Prior to joining the faculty at Berkeley in 1981, he was Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at M.I.T. He is known for his research into the mechanics and mechanisms of fracture and fatigue of a broad range of structural and biological materials; his current interests are focused on the structural integrity of bone, the development of bio-inspired structural materials, and fracture in ceramic-matrix composites and advanced metallic alloys.  He is a fellow of ACS, ASM, ASME, InstPhys, IOM³, MRS and TMS, and was awarded the Turnbull Award from MRS in 2013 and the Acta Materialia Gold Medal in 2014.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.