Sia Nemat-Nasser, Distinguished Professor of Mechanics and Materials, The University of California, San Diego

For fundamental theoretical and experimental contributions in: dynamic stability; deformation and failure modes of materials; nano-electro-chemo-mechanical characterization and modeling of ionic polymer metal composites; and composites with integrated tuned electromagnetic functionality, self-healing, and self-sensing.

Professor Sia Nemat-Nasser earned his B.S. in Engineering from Sacramento State University, followed by M.S in Civil Engineering and Ph.D. in Structural Engineering, both from the University of California, Berkeley, while serving as an assistant professor in Civil Engineering at Sacramento State University. Sia then undertook a post-doctoral assignment at Northwestern University, leading to his first appointment as Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Diego, followed by fifteen years at Northwestern University as Professor of Civil Engineering and Applied Mathematics. He went back in 1985 to the University of California, San Diego, where he is Distinguished Professor of Mechanics and Materials.

In preparing cases for faculty appointments, my colleagues in other fields often ask about citations of each candidate and his or her comparees.  Despite obvious resistance, my colleagues give following reasons:

Applied Mechanics Division Banquet, Sheraton Hotel, Seattle, Washington, November 13th, 2007.

I would like to begin by thanking the members of the Timoshenko Medal Committee, consisting of the five members of the Applied Mechanics Division Executive Committee, Ravi-Chandar, Dan Inman, Zhigang Suo, Tayfun Tezduyar, and Ares Rosakis, the five previous chairs of the Executive Committee, Tom Farris, Wing Kam Liu, Mary Boyce, Pol Spanos, and Stelios Kyriakides, and the five previous Timoshenko Medalists, Ken Johnson, Grisha Barenblatt, Mort Gurtin, Ben Freund, and John Hutchinson. As a former member of the Executive Committee, I completed my ten-year tenure on the Timoshenko Committee the year before last, and now I will have the opportunity to return for another five years. Actually, I am looking forward to it. I enjoyed my time on the Executive and Medal Committees, and the opportunity to work with outstanding mechanicians, such as Carl Herakovich, Stan Berger, Lallit Anand, Alan Needleman, the late Dusan Krajcinovic, and many others. I also want to thank everyone in attendance here tonight.

This award is a great honor. Frankly, I am thrilled to receive it, but I am also humbled by it. The previous recipients represent a who’s who of twentieth century engineering science. It is quite an incredible club to join. I promise to do my best to live up to the standard as I continue my scientific work.

Tom Hughes is named the 2007 Timoshenko Medalist by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.  The Timoshenko Medal is widely considered the most prestigious medal in the international community of mechanics.   Timoshenko was the first recipient of the Medal, in 1957, and the year 2007 marks the 50th anniversary.

While it is hard to know exactly how many mechanicians are in practice in the world, the US National Committee of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics represents 15 organizations in the US, with a combined membership about half a million.

Presented at the Applied Mechanics Dinner of the 2006 Winter Annual Meeting of ASME, Hilton Chicago Hotel, 9 November 2006.

First and formost, I must acknowledge with gratitude the honour of being selected for the Timoshenko medal for 2006.   But since a speech is now expected, I realise that this is not free lunch.  If you know a good pub, this would be a good time to slip away.

When I received  Virgil  Carter's letter informing me that I had been selected,  I could not believe it.  There must have been a mistake;  after all Johnson is a very common name.   I am reminded of my first meeting with  Bernie Budiansk from Harvard,  also a Timoshenko  medallist.   He asked, "Did you write that book on vibration with Bishop?" "No. That was Dan Johnson";  " Did you edit that British Journal of mechanical sciences?":  "No. That was Bill Johnson";   "Who the hell are you!"

Sources of Inspiration

Text of Timoshenko Medal acceptance speech delivered at the Applied Mechanics Dinner of the 1988 Winter Annual Meeting of ASME in Chicago, Illinois.

I should like, first and foremost, to express my deep appreciation to the Applied Mechanics Division of ASME for the honor they have done me in awarding the Timoshenko Medal for 1988. Any scientist or engineer waged in research in mechanics, even one with the minimum of vanity, would be delighted and thrilled to have his work recognized by an award with such high prestige. In past years the Timoshenko medal has gone to some of the outstanding scientists of this century. As we have heard from Professor Leibovich, the inaugural award 31 years ago was to Stephen Timoshenko himself, and in the following year there was a bumper crop of three medalists: Arpad Nadai, distinguished for his work in plasticity, and those two giants of fluid and solid mechanics, Theodore von Karman and Geoffrey Taylor. The last-named of these medalists was my mentor and teacher, and the little I know about the doing of research in fluid mechanics was learned from him. I also had the privilege of editing the four volumes of Taylor's collected scientific papers, and this left me with a profound admiration and respect for his insight, originality and capacity for scientific discovery. My feelings about von Karman are similar, although I did not know him as well. I intend no disrespect for ASME when I say that the standard of the Timoshenko medalists has undoubtedly slipped a little over the past 31 years. My friend Bill Sears has done a brilliant job of covering up that decline, and I thank him warmly for his kind remarks while not believing all of them.

Comments on Discovery and Invention

Text of a talk delivered at the Applied Mechanics Dinner of the 1986 Winter Annual Meeting of ASME in Anaheim, California.

With regard to the topic of these comments, I was told that a title of some kind was mandatory so I gave a title which seemed reasonably impressive. Upon reflection, I have little to offer in the way of comments which are correspondingly impressive. It occurred to me that the forward motion of a crack in a structural material might be of some interest as a descriptive model. A 1950 technical paper, by Kies, Sullivan, and Irwin, reported that progressive fracturing usually occurs by the development and joining of advance separations and that these local behaviors tend to be rather abrupt. By use of motivation as a driving force and by substituting "advance ideas" for "advance separations," a plausible descriptive model of forward technological progress seemed possible. Of course, details related to the development and joining of advance ideas would be needed. These would include motivation, opportunity, guidance, and information exchange. In his 1985 Timoshenko Medal comments, Sternberg noted certain research management features which are not helpful. The conditions one likes for best progress certainly include benign methods of research management. After additional reflection on these and other complexities related to innovative progress, I decided that the descriptive model I had thought to develop was unlikely to be useful. So my comments will have a different nature. They will be memories and historic fragments related to my topic and they will be restricted to the strength of materials field.

Applied Mechanics: an age old science perpetually in rebirth

Grigory I. Barenblatt

Mr. Chairman, Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I want to express my gratitude to the Executive Committee of the Applied Mechanics Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers for nominating me for the Timoshenko Medal, and to the Board of Governors for awarding me the Medal on behalf of ASME.

The personality and name of Stepan Prokofievich Timoshenko (Stephen P. Timoshenko as he is called in this country) is very special for me. When I was a beginning student at Moscow High Technical School, where I studied before entering the Mathematics Department at Moscow State University. I purchased his book “The theory of elasticity”: in fact, this was the first technical book in my personal library. The clarity and depth of the presentation of this difficult subject wits then and remains now for me an unsurpassed standard. Something in this book astonished me, and I addressed a question to my maternal grandfather, an eminent Professor of Differential Geometry at Moscow State University. (I was raised by his family after my mother, one of the first virologists, perished preparing a vaccine against encephalitis.) The question wits: the author is definitely a Russian (at that time in our circles nobody noticed the difference between Russians, Byelorussians, and Ukrainians). Why did his book appear in translation from English? Grandfather explained - Timoshenko emigrated after the Revolution (such people were unpopular in the Soviet Union in the late forties) - however, with a kind smile he took from his library and presented me with Timoshenko’s course on elasticity in two volumes, published in Russian in 1914 and 1916 by the Sanct Petersburg Institute of Railways Transportation, and presented to him by the author. SP got the chair at this Institute after some period of unemployment: before that he was Dean at Kiev Polytechnic Institute and was fired by the Minister of Education for substantial exceeding the number of admitted Jewish students allowed by explicitly formulated (this was important) norms. Visiting my family in Moscow last summer after learning about the award, I wanted to bring these volumes to this country, but I was warned that strict rules concerning old books would not allow it. When I already was a young scientist, I was introduced to SP during his visit to Moscow. Also, I was proud when I had seen that SP and James P. Goodier mentioned my work concerning fracture in their book.

Confessions of a slightly frayed continuum mechanician

by Morton E. Gurtin , November, 2004

This award is a great honor: although I’m a mathematician, my career began as a mechanical engineer. After graduating from RPI with a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, I worked as a structures engineer for Douglas Aircraft and for General Electric, where I spent many hours studying Timoshenko’s books on vibration analysis and plates and shells.

My third year at General Electric was in a consulting group concerned with structures and vibrations. My work was interesting: during one period I worked on a problem involving a vibrating washing machine and at the same time performed a vibration analysis of a nuclear aircraft-engine. Our group consisted almost entirely of Ph.D.’s, and I wrote a few papers on topics related to my work. I was greatly influenced by two colleagues, Bob Plunkett and Paul Paslay, who strongly suggested that I go back to school. Under their counseling I applied to Stanford and MIT in Engineering Mechanics and to Brown University in Applied Mathematics. My first choice was MIT, but because of my college-grades (which is another story for another time) MIT offered me a probationary assistantship, but Brown ignored my grades and offered me a National Defense Fellowship, which I accepted.

Reflections and Refractions

L. B. Freund, November 19, 2003

Friends and colleagues, I've attended many Applied Mechanics Dinners over the years, but this one has been the most enjoyable so far. Hopefully, that view will survive the next 20 minutes or so.

It's a singular honor to receive the Timoshenko Medal of ASME. For one thing, it's deeply gratifying to get a pat on the back from one's peers. It's also a privilege to have one's name added to the list of previous recipients, which includes so many individuals for whom I have the deepest respect.

Stephen Timoshenko himself had withdrawn into retirement long before I discovered that I had an interest in his field, and I never encountered him in person. However, I do have something of a direct connection to Timoshenko, in that he is my academic great great great grandfather. The appearance of his advanced textbooks on mechanics was surely among the defining events for the field in the 20th century.

LIFE AS A MECHANICIAN: 1956-

John W. Hutchinson

Ted Belytschko, November 13, 2001, New York

Well I have been sitting in the audience of Applied Mechanics dinners for more than 30 years now, never even dreaming that I would get the Timoshenko medal. I have enjoyed many of the talks, and heard many nuggets of wisdom to guide me in research and life. I still vividly remember one of the first talks I heard by Den Hartog- in those days every Timoshenko lecturer could still start with a reminiscence of their contact with Timoshenko. Den Hartog had worked for Timoshenko one summer, and when he wrote his study up as a report, Timoshenko told him to submit it for publication. Den Hartog responded that he did not think that this work was something the world was waiting for. Timoshenko replied-"How many publications that have appeared in the literature do you think the world was waiting for?" One outcome was that I proceeded to publish too many papers, but it is interesting that many of the papers I did not think much of had some impact, whereas many that I liked had no impact .

November 9, 2000

To begin, I would like to express my appreciation to the members of the Applied Mechanics Division who somehow came to the conclusion that I should be awarded the Timoshenko Medal. I would also like to thank all those who must have written letters or, through other means, provided supportive input that contributed to my being named the recipient of such a prestigious award. I hope that everyone understands that experimental research involves a team effort so that this award should be viewed as being shared by the many excellent graduate students that I have had the privilege of advising. They, along with very supportive technical staff members, are the ones who have done the experiments for the research that is being recognized by this award.

Small is Good

By Anatol Roshko, California Institute of Technology

The text of the Timoshenko Medal Acceptance Speech delivered at the Applied Mechanics Dinner of the 1999 IMECE in Nashville, TN.

David Belden’s letter announcing the award was really a surprise, almost a shock. At first I wondered whether it was another example of a story which you may have heard and which, I believe, originated in the FSU. Two friends are at a grand reception sipping cocktails when one notices a man with his chest almost completely covered with medals. Says one to the other, “Do you have any idea what those medals are for?” and the other replies, “Well, you see that one at the top left? That one was a mistake; and the others followed automatically.” I humored myself out of that thought but not out of a feeling of guilt. You see, I suddenly felt terrible that I was not a member of the ASME. There had been opportunities but somehow I had let them go by. One reason is that I was concerned about another onslaught of communications, information and other paper that always results and requires attention. Fortunately, ASME lost no time in relieving my guilt. In a few weeks I received a nice invitation and forms to fill out, and now I am Member No.6143358. And sure enough, information has begun to roll in: a beautiful, glossy magazine, notices of various meetings, etc.

AS I REMEMBER

by O. C. Zienkiewicz, University of Wales, Swansea

The text of the Timoshenko Medal Acceptance Speech delivered at the Applied Mechanics Dinner of the 1998 IMECE in Anaheim, California.

1. Introduction
It is a great pleasure and honour to be included in the distinguished list of recipients of the Stephen Timoshenko Medal. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the various friends I have in it who must have been responsible for my selection.

Because of my age and my long involvement in the field I know personally, or have known, more than half of the previous recipients of this award. Indeed, the very first recipient and namesake of the award, Stephen Timoshenko, was one of these. We met in 1960 at Northwestern University when he visited one of his early doctoral students, much distinguished in the field, Professor Nick Hetenyi. Both of these acquaintances are now gone, having worked long and contributed much to the subject of applied mechanics. In the long list of recipients, now departed, I find my own Ph.D. supervisor, Sir Richard Southwe1l, and an old adviser and friend, Professor William Prager. Amongst those no longer here is another friend, James Lighthill. Though he received his medal as early as 1963, he was still healthy and fit this year. But many may not know that it is only a few months ago that he met his end – trying to swim round the Island of Sark in the Channel islands, a feat much younger men would not attempt and which he, using his knowledge of the tides, previously accomplished more than once. I salute his courage and achievements.

Mechanics of Research

The text of the Timoshenko Medal Acceptance Speech delivered at the Applied Mechanics Dinner at the 1997 IMECE.
by J. R. Willis, University of Cambridge

The award of the Timoshenko Medal is a singular and unexpected honour. I thank my friends who exaggerated my case so successfully, and promise them that I shall do my best to justify their faith in the future, even if I have not managed it in the past.

I’m not sure if I should say this, but I will. I have attended one Applied Mechanics Division Dinner previously. Bernie Budiansky received the Timoshenko Medal. I was surprised that he spoke for so long! Now I realize why. It was no ordinary after-dinner speech but the Timoshenko Lecture, and its length is prescribed. Therefore, I can only advise now that you settle down and prepare to let your thoughts wander!

A technical exposition is clearly not required, and I sought inspiration, or at least examples of how to proceed, by reading the lectures of a few previous medallists. It seemed to me that I might try to follow, in some approximate way, the path taken by George Batchelor, who was also my boss at a formative time in my career. He was founder and head of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in Cambridge.

The Revolution in Applied Mechanics from Timoshenko to Computation

J. TINSLEY ODEN

The Applied Mechanics Division of the ASME established the Timoshenko Medal in 1957 to recognize distinguished work in the field. The first recipient was Stephen P. Timoshenko himself, an individual who contributed enormously to the prestige and strength of mechanics in this country and a legend whom I, as a young student in mechanics, looked upon as a special hero, one to be admired and emulated. To be honored by being awarded the Timoshenko Medal by the AMD is a very special event for me and one for which I will be eternally grateful. I will do my utmost to uphold the honor of the award and to live up to the high standard exemplified by its past recipients.

I begin this presentation with the somewhat conspicuous observation that during my career in applied mechanics, a special revolution has taken place which will forever change the subject and which will affect the way all science is done for rest of time. It is, of course, the emergence of the computer: computation providing a third pillar to the classical two pillars of the scientific method, theory and experiment, a pillar overlapping the traditional two but expanding each in ways never dreamed of in the days of Timoshenko’s work.

by Daniel D. Joseph , University of Minnesota

In my instructions about the correct behavior of recipients of the Timoshenko Medal at this dinner, Tom Cruse wrote to me that "While I ask that you consider the hour and the length of the evening in selecting the length of your remarks, the time is yours and we are honored to hear from you at that time." This suggests to me that as a Timoshenko Medalist, I can be indulged but that if I really want to be appreciated, I should keep it short.

I understand that when Jerry Ericksen got this award, he said "thank you" and sat down. I would like to follow this courageous path, but I lack the courage and so I will embellish "thank you" just a little.

James R. Rice

It is a great pleasure to be here among so many old friends and colleagues, and to thank you for the recognition symbolized by this award. Especially, it is a pleasure to thank my dear friend Alan Needleman for his kind words of introduction.

Any mechanician must consider it a great honor to receive an award named for Timoshenko. Like for many others here, the sight of his classic black-covered books on elasticity and structural mechanics brings back pleasant memories of my earliest involvement in our field. A while ago my interest in the historical origin of ideas in mechanics developed more purposefully, in response being asked to prepare an article on Solid Mechanics for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. That led ultimately to close study of another Timoshenko book, one that I had known before just by browsing acquaintance, namely, his History of Strength of Materials, with a Brief Account of the History of Theory of Elasticity and Theory of Structures. That was published in 1953, when he was 75 years old. The preface revealed that for 25 years before that time, he had been lecturing to students on the history of concepts and ideas in solid mechanics, and on the careers of those from Galileo to his own mentor, Ludwig Prandtl at Göttingen, who shaped the subject into what was then its modern form. One cannot help but understand that Timoshenko cared in a deep cultural sense about his subject and those who shaped it, and that too adds to the pleasure of receiving this award named for him.

John L. Lumley

I am profoundly honored by the award of this medal. Awards like this are made, of course, not by faceless organizations, but by collections of individuals, voting in rooms which are no longer smoke-filled; it is particularly gratifying to find that so many of my colleagues think I am worthy of this honor. As Jan Achenbach remarked last year, we are of the sputnik generation, too young to have known Timoshenko, who, in fact, did have some connections with Cornell long before I came there. Although I have spent my life in fluid mechanics, I began by taking all the standard courses in solid mechanics: strength of materials, elasticity, plates and shells, buckling; in nearly every one there was a text by Timoshenko or a friend or relation, all admirably clear. I felt very grateful to him.

I would like to mention that the three ASME medal winners this year (Roger Arndt, David Crighton and I) were all together at Penn State in the Aerospace Engineering Department and the Garfield Thomas Water Tunnel, under the leadership of George Wislicenus about thirty years ago. Roger and I were on the faculty, and David came in the summers as a consultant. I think that says something about the vision and values that George used as he built his group.

The Wages of Wave Analysis

by Jan D. Achenbach, Northwestern University

The text of the Timoshenko Medal Acceptance Speech delivered at the Applied Mechanics Dinner of the 1992 Winter Annual Meeting of ASME.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends and Fellow Members of the Applied Mechanics Division, I am grateful to the Applied Mechanics Division for honoring me with the Timoshenko Medal. When I think of the past recipients of this award, I must, however, stand here with a great deal of humility.

It appears that I am the first member of a next generation, the redoubtable sputnik generation, squeezed in between the elder statesmen and the baby boomers, to receive the medal. Undoubtedly many of my contempo¬raries, who have kept the field of applied mechanics on the move, will follow soon.

Mechanics of Man

by Yuan-Cheng Fung, University of California, San Diego

The text of the Timoshenko Medal Acceptance Speech delivered at the Applied Mechanics Dinner of the 1991 Winter Annual Meeting of ASME in Atlanta, Georgia.

First of all, let me thank those of you who worked hard to give me this honor. I know how much effort was involved. I want to thank Dr. Saric, Dr. Bogy, and all the Committee members who indulged in me. And thank you all here this evening. To Chia Shun's remarks I am speechless. I love him as a brother. I am proud to be praised by a sibling. He is the Timoshenko Professor at the University of Michigan. With this medal I can catch up with him to honor our hero.

I am very glad to be given this Award, because Timoshenko is my hero. His books on Elasticity, Elastic Stability, and Plates and Shells are the ones I cut my teeth on. Another hero of mine is Theodor von Karman. A third one is Poiseuille, who brought fluid mechanics to medicine. They are my idols, and I am very fortunate to have been given a von Karman medal by ASCE in 1976, a Poiseuille medal by the International Society of Biorheology in 1986, and a Timoshenko medal today. I would like to speak about them. I think they have a common feature in that they developed a mechanics of man, as distinguished from a mechanics of the heaven and earth.

The Joy of Applying Mechanics

Stephen H. Crandall, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Text of Timoshenko Medal acceptance speech delivered at the Applied Mechanics Dinner of the 1990 Winter Annual Meeting of ASME in Dallas, Texas.

Good evening. Thank you Tom and Art for your kind introductions.

Thirty-five years ago I joined the Applied Mechanics Division of ASME. Two years later I was in the audience when the first Timoshenko medal was awarded to Stepan Prokovievich Timoshenko. I wonder how many others here tonight were also in that audience (a show of hands indicated that there were a total of twelve including the speaker). After that first medal, the Division went into high gear. In the next three years, six of the remaining giants of applied mechanics were given Timoshenko medals: Th. von Karman, G. I. Taylor, Arpad Nadai, Sir Richard Southwell, C. B. Biezeno, and Richard Grammel. Then in 1961, the Division settled down to our present steady-state operation of one medal a year. I haven't missed many AMD dinners through the years so I have had the good fortune to see most of the previous 36 awardees receive their medals. Taken together, they form an impressive cavalcade of applied mechanics. I consider it a very great honor to join this team.

Rumination of a Reclusive Elastician

By Eli Sternberg

Delivered at the Applied Mechanics Dinner of the 1985 Annual ASME Meeting in Miami Beach, Florida

Ladies and Gentlemen: As you know, medals - much like arthritis - are a common symptom of advancing years. Be this as it may, I am grateful for the recognition implied by this award.

Every medal has a proverbial reverse side. The reverse side of the Timoshenko Medal is the requirement that the recipient must make a speech. In view of my lifelong allergy to after-dinner speeches, the thought of having to give one has been rather unsettling. To make matters worse, I was asked over two months ago to submit a title for my talk.

Since a technical topic seemed inappropriate for the occasion, I tried hard to think of a suitably broad and vacuous subject: something with a sexy title, like "Applied Mechanics - Past, Present, and Future." I abandoned this idea, first, because I always feel a little uneasy in making pronouncements about the future of anything and, second, because I am not sure I know what is meant by "Applied Mechanics".