Due to the unpredictable political landscape in Europe after the First World War and upheaval of World War II many European scientist and engineers emigrated to the United States. Ukrainian engineer Stephan Timoshenko fled the Bolsheviks Red Army in 1918 and eventually emigrated to the U.S. in 1922; over the next twenty-two years he taught applied mechanics at the University of Michigan and Stanford University. Timoshenko authored thirteen textbooks in applied mechanics, many considered the gold standard in their fields; he also founded the Applied Mechanics Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1927 and is considered “America’s Father of Engineering Mechanics.” In 1930 Theodore von Kármán left Germany and became the first director of the Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology ; von Kármán would later co-found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1944. With the leadership of Timoshenko and von Kármán, the influx of talent from Europe, and the rapid growth of the aeronautical and defense industries, applied mechanics became a mature discipline in the U.S. by 1950.