Subra Suresh, the Dean of Engineering, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is in line to become the next Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), according to this post at Science.

The NSF director must be confirmed by the Senate, although it would be unusual for a nominee to attract any opposition.

Subra is a well known researcher in the field of mechanical behavior of materials.  His books on fatigue and thin films are widely read.  In recent years, his research has been focused on molecular and cellular biomechanics. He is iMechanica user 190. 

A question for those interested in the history of mechanics. We have Hooke's law for 2D stress-strain and a generalised Hooke's law for 3D stress states. Maybe I have missed something in my reading of history, but since it appears that it was Thomas Young and not Hooke who related stress and strain (Hooke looked only at force - displacement), why don't we use Young's law or a generalised Young's law?

Iain Finnie passed away in December. At the time he was the James Fife Professor Emeritus U.C. Berkeley Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Iain had an amazing number of contributions spanning diverse area of mechanics. To the best of my recollection:

He published some great early work on the shear angle in metal cutting in 1953.
He published the first book on creep in 1959 with William Heller.
He published a (the?) pioneering paper on erosion in 1960.
He published some great work on fracture and the directional stability of cracks in the 70’s
He invented the crack compliance method for measuring residual stress in 1986.

Some bio info:
B.Sc. U. Glasgow 1949

C. S. Desai Is Recipient of the 2009 Nathan M. Newmark Medal

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~csdesai/

Regents’ Professor Chandra Desai has been awarded the 2009 Nathan M.
Newmark Medal by the Structural Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
Institutes of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

http://www.asce.org/pressroom/honors/winners/?w=newmark

Congratulations to Prof. Yonggang Huang who has been selected to appear on ISIHighlyCited.com because of his exceptional citation count in the field of Engineering.

http://hcr3.isiknowledge.com/author.cgi?&link1=Browse&link2=Results&id=6498

A growing number of mechanicians are entering the field of soft materials, such as polymers, gels, and tissues. While they interact with researchers in technical societies traditionally identified with the field, they also maintain connection with researchers in applied mechanics.

In response to this trend, the Applied Mechanics Division, of the ASME International, has recently created a new Technical Committee on Soft materials.  The new Technical Committee will serve as a home for this group of people, and provide links between applied mechanics and new applications.

With great pleasure I inform you that Jerrold E. Marsden, of Caltech, are selected to receive the 2010 Thomas K. Caughey Dynamics Award.

I am writing on behalf of the Thomas K. Caughey Dynamics Award Committee: Zhigang Suo (Chair), Tayfun E. Tezduyar, Ares J. Rosakis, Kenneth M. Liechti, Lawrence A. Bergman, Daniel J. Inman, Krishnaswamy Ravi-Chandar, Thomas N. Farris, Wing Kam Liu, Mary C. Boyce, Paul Jennings, Geof Tomlinson, and Ali Nayfeh.

With great pleasure I inform you that Yoichiro Matsumoto, of the University of Tokyo, is selected to receive the 2010 Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Award.

I am writing on behalf of the Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Award Committee: Zhigang Suo (Chair), Tayfun E. Tezduyar, Ares J. Rosakis, Kenneth M. Liechti, Lawrence A. Bergman, Daniel J. Inman, Krishnaswamy Ravi-Chandar, Thomas N. Farris, Wing Kam Liu, Mary C. Boyce, Choon Fong Shih, Oscar Dillon, Lewis Wheeler, Carl T. Herakovich, and Arthur W. Leissa.

Harley T. Johnson has just been selected to receive the 2010 Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award.

I am writing on behalf of the Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award Committee: Zhigang Suo (Chair), Tayfun E. Tezduyar, Ares J. Rosakis, Kenneth M. Liechti, Lawrence A. Bergman, Daniel J. Inman, Krishnaswamy Ravi-Chandar, Thomas N. Farris, Wing Kam Liu, and Mary C. Boyce.

ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress
Orlando, Florida, November 17, 2009

Reminiscences and Reflections of a Mechanician by Luck

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:

When I wrote from Prague to the great Stephen P. Timoshenko, I would not even have dreamt that a medal bearing his name would once be bestowed upon me. I feel immensely lucky and humbled by joining the august group of previous medalists, and accept this honor with feelings of deep gratitude to the Applied Mechanics Division for selecting me, and to my great solid mechanics colleagues at Northwestern for their friendship and stimulation. I thank my excellent students and associates for their collaboration; my university for a great academic environment; many agencies for funding; and my wife Iva for her loving support.  Missing any of that, I would not be here today.

I feel much sympathy for Timoshenko, who faced in his pre-American career many setbacks. So did I, albeit milder. But overcoming setbacks hardens one's resolve and may provide unexpected opportunities and enrichments. 

Timoshenko's formative years as well as mine coincided with the greatest calamity of the last century, the victory of communism in Russia and three decades later its imposition on my native land. His was an amazing life story. His father, a hardworking man, was born in serfdom, the Russian equivalent of slavery.  Against severe odds, he became a land surveyor and managed to arrange a good education for his son. After early successes in science and a quick rise in academia to deanship in Kiev, Timoshenko was fired for exceeding the admission quota for Jewish students. The bolshevik revolution in 1917 was a prolonged setback to his academic career and reduced his family to penury. After an adventurous escape through Crimea and Turkey to the West, he taught briefly in Zagreb and joined Westinghouse at the age of 42, set on a path to fame.

I was lucky to have been born into a great intellectual family. For much of my early education I am indebted to my father, Zdeněk J. Bažant, a geotechnical engineering professor in Prague, to my mother Štěpánka, a PhD in sociology, and to my grandfather Zdeněk Bažant, rector and professor of structural mechanics in Prague (who was active in IUTAM since its founding and survived Nazi concentration camp Teresienstadt). 

Xi Chen, of Columbia University, has graciously agreed to be a new Editor of the iMechanica Journal Club.  Xi is one of the earliest active users of iMechanica (user number 15), and has played a large role in shaping the development of iMechanica.  He has a broad vision for mechanics, and has made contributions to diverse topics.  in 2008, he received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

The mission of the Journal Club is to facilitate discussion at the frontier of mechanics and its applications. 

It is with deep sorrow that we inform you that Jim Knowles passed away today.

Updates on 7 November 2009.  A photo of Jim is received from Rohan Abeyaratne.  The following is a Caltech press release issued on the passing of James K. Knowles, William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor and Professor of Applied Mechanics, Emeritus.

James K. Knowles, William J. Keenan Jr. Professor of Applied Mechanics, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), passed away November 1. He was 78 years old.

Knowles made fundamental research contributions to the theory of nonlinear elasticity and the mathematical theories of materials and structures. His work provided important insight into how various materials and structures behave and enabled him and others to develop predictive theories.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 14, 1931, Knowles grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the fall of 1948, earning his bachelor's and doctoral degrees, both in mathematics, in 1952 and 1957, respectively. He then stayed at MIT for an additional year, as an instructor in mathematics.

Knowles joined the faculty at Caltech in 1958 as assistant professor of applied mechanics; he was named associate professor in 1961, followed by full professor in 1965. He spent the remainder of his academic career at Caltech, becoming professor emeritus in 1997.

Considered a remarkable teacher and mentor, Knowles inspired and influenced generations of students and scholars through classes in mathematics and mechanics. A visionary thinker, he recruited and mentored a number of junior colleagues who took Caltech in new and fruitful research directions. He had a deep affection for Caltech and served in various administrative capacities.

"Jim was the greatest mentor I ever had. He held my hand when I first came to Caltech as an assistant professor. He also taught me how to teach," says Ares Rosakis, chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, and Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering at Caltech. "He would look for the spark in people's eyes and help them make their dreams a reality. As we at Caltech seek to create the best mentoring opportunities for our young faculty, we should be guided by Jim's example."

Tsien Hsue-shen, the father of the Chinese nuclear missile and space program, died yesterday.  He studied mechanics under von Karman.  Together, they wrote papers on the buckling of cylindrical shells.  A poignant biography of Tsien was written by Iris Chang. 

Zhigang Suo , Allen E. and Marilyn M. Puckett Professor of Mechanics and Materials at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), founder and architect of iMechanica , has been honored with a Humboldt Research Award .

The award is granted in recognition of a researcher's entire achievements to date to academics whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in future are eligible to be nominated for a Humboldt Research Award.

Professor Huajian Gao, Brown University, will give the Robert Henry Thurston Lecture at the 2009 International Mechanical Engineering Congress, Orlando, Florida.  His lecture “Nanomechanics of biological systems - What can we learn from nature about hierarchical materials?” will be in room Euro 10, on the 3rd floor at the Walt Disney Dolphin Hotel (conference hotel), at 10am, November 16, Monday.

L. Mahadevan, of Harvard University, is among this year's recipients of The MacArthur Genius Grant.  Congratulations!

Tony Evans passed away on Wednesday after a long and valiant fight against cancer.  He was Alcoa Professor of Materials, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Center for Multifunctional Materials and Structures at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

From 1998 to 2002, he served as Gordon Wu Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Director of the Princeton Materials Institute at Princeton University. During 1994-1998, he was Gordon McKay Professor of Materials Engineering at Harvard University. Prior to that he was the founding Chair of the Materials Department and Director of the High Performance Composites Center at the University of California at Santa Barbara (1985-1994) and a Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Mineral Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley (1978-1985).

With a generous gift from the Haythornthwaite Foundation, the ASME Applied Mechanics Division will award grants to students presenting their own work at the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE 2009).  The grant will reimburse travel expenses and registration fees, up to $1,000 per student, for up to 10 students.

To apply for the Haythornthwaite Grant, please email Professor Zhigang Suo (suo@seas.harvard.edu), in a single PDF file, with the following information:

Leonhard Euler has 5 students and 56,850 academic descendents.  They are all listed by the Mathematics Genealogy Project.  Euler himself was a student of Johann Bernoulli, and produced a student named Joseph Louis Lagrange, who in turn produced Fourier and Poisson.  No wonder Euler has so many descendents by now. 

For some time I have been thinking how we can organize a project to trace the genealogy of all mechanicians.  It will be fun.  It may even teach us some history of mechanics. 

A thought came to me this afternoon how we can organize this project with very little work.

Markus Buehler of MIT, Ioannis Chasiotis of UIUC, John Dabiri of Caltech, and Robert Wood of Harvard are among 100 recipients of this year’s Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers.  Congratulations!

Congratulations to the winners of the 2009 Awards:

• Pradeep Sharma wins the Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award
• Eugenio Oñate wins the Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Award
• Stephen H. Crandall wins the Thomas K. Caughey Dynamics Award
• James R. Barber wins the Drucker Medal
• Stelios Kyriakides wins the Koiter Medal
• Zdenek P. Bazant wins the Timoshenko Medal

All awards will be presented at the Applied Mechanics Annual Dinner, on Tuesday, 17 November 2009, in Florida, at the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition.  Join us to congratulate the winners, celebrate mechanics, and renew friendship.

Related post:

Call for nominations for the 2010 Applied Mechanics Awards

You can download a pdf file of this announcement.

The Applied Mechanics Division, of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, seeks nominations for the awards listed below. All the awards are international.  Neither the nominee nor the nominator need be a member of the ASME.  Further descriptions of the awards are given at http://divisions.asme.org/amd/Honors_Awards.cfm.

Does anyone know anything about the life of V. V. Novozhilov, author of "Foundations of Nonlinear Theory of Elasticity"? Is he still living? Did he ever leave Leningrad?