The Georgian IFToMM community mourns after the loss of its first and long-time chairman prominent scientist Professor Nodar Davitashvili, who passed away on March 2, 2024. The whole life of Nodar Davitashvili was connected with mechanism and machine science.

Nodar Davitashvili was born on June 23, 1939 in the village Akhalkalaki, Kaspi's region of Georgia. After graduating from the Georgian Polytechnic Institute in 1964 with a qualification of light industry engineer-technologist and post-graduate courses of same institute in 1978, he successfully made his way from junior scientific researcher to one of leading scientists in Mechanism and Machine Science.

The sphere of Nodar Davitashvili’s work and contributions is many-sided: from the theory of mechanisms and machines, over applied mechanics up to precision of mechanism and machines, dynamics of mechanisms taking friction into account and spherical mechanisms-pantographs, to name just a few examples, one can find his broad interests within the spectrum from theory and practice. His overall work encompasses vast, deep and practical topics covering all aspects from theory to experiments, and for the monograph "Fundamentals of the theory of error and precision of joint-lever mechanisms" he was awarded with Georgi Nikoladze prize.

Many or his papers are published in the USA, Canada, Germany, Japan, Spain, India, Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Russia, Italy, Georgia  and other countries.

Nodar Davitashvili made a great contribution on establishment of Georgian Federation for being a member of IFToMM. Since June 23, 1999 Georgia has been a member of IFToMM, and Nodar Davitashvili was the first and long-time chairman of the Georgian Member Organization of IFToMM. Having conducted significant organizational work, Nodar Davitashvili established the scientific journal "Problems of Applied Mechanics" that was awarded by the status of the official journal of IFToMM he serves as an editor-in-chief of the journal. In 2003 the journal has been named as "Problems of Mechanics”.

Nodar Davitashvili conducted fruitful scientific-pedagogical work with PhD students, young scientists and he participated in different conferences and symposia. Under his guidance, 14 candidate dissertations were successfully defended.

Besides scientific activities, Nodar Davitashvili actively had been working on improving the learning process of students for 45 years. He was an author of many textbooks on the theory of mechanisms and machines, applied mechanics, light industry, manipulators and robots, etc. High professionalism, moral and pedagogical talent made of Nodar Davitashvili an irradiating and highly respected authority among his colleagues and students.

With Professor Nodar Davitashvili the IFToMM community lost a hardworking, multifaceted and productive researcher.