waves

A few points that might be of general interest:

1. The dates: The date of Huygens' first written down material, which was orally presented to the French Academy of Sciences, is 1678---in contrast to the oft-quoted date of 1690. 1690 was the year of the first, French, publication of these notes (plus other material) in the form of a book.

Attached is an intriguing commentary on the scientific method through an example, written by my good friend, Luc Tartar. The specific example is that of trying to understand what 'light' might be, especially from a mathematician's point of view. The mathematician in this case is an extremely talented one, who also happens to actually understand a whole lot of physics and mechanics.

Elsevier is pleased to announce that Professor Sia Nemat-Nasser will be presenting 'Managing Stress Waves Over Multi-frequencies by Micro-architectural Design of Materials', the Mechanics Research Communications Elsevier Distinguished Lecture (sponsored by Elsevier and the New Jersey Institute of Technology Granular Science Laboratory). The lecture will take place in the Guttenberg Information Technologies Center, NJIT, on Monday April 18, 2011, 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. Full details are available at

You are cordially invited to participate in the Symposium on the Mechanics of Electromagnetic Materials and Structures, the 5th International Conference on Nonlinear Mechanics (ICNM-V), to be held in Shanghai, China, June 11-14, 2007.  You may find more information at the website of the conference.

The symposium topics include piezoelectricity, ferroelectricity, magnetoelasticity, electromagnetic fluids and various applications in engineering and technology, but are not limited to the above. Experimental, theoretical, and computational studies are all welcome.

Please e-mail your one-page abstract(s) to any of us listed below. We look forward to hearing from you. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at

Professor Ji Wang, Ningbo University, wangji@nbu.edu.cn

Professor Yuantai Hu, Central South University, hudeng@263.net

Professor Jiashi Yang, University of Nebraska, jyang1@unl.edu

Professor Daining Fang, Tsinghua University, fangdn@tsinghua.edu.cn

Submission of abstract: as soon as possible.

Notification of acceptance: Nov. 1, 2006

Submission of final paper(s) for the conference proceedings: Jan. 1, 2007