August 2, 1901 — August 3, 1989
By F. R. N. Nabarro and A. S. Argon

in Biographical Memoirs v70, 1996

Prepared as a Biographical Memoir for the Royal Society of London and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

EGON OROWAN died in the Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 3 August 1989, a day after his 87th birthday. He is buried in the Mount Auburn Cemetery. Together with G.I. Taylor and Michael Polanyi, he was responsible for the introduction of the crystal dislocation into physics as the essential mediator of plastic deformation. Though he occasionally spoke at meetings concerned with science and technology policy, and wrote letters to the press on a number of topics, he was an essentially private person and left no biographical notes. In compiling the present Memoir, FRNN has been principally responsible for the period 1902-1951, which Orowan spent mainly in Europe, and ASA for the period 1951-1989, when Orowan was affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

August 2, 1901 - August 3, 1989