The Rodney Hill Prize In Solid Mechanics

founded and sponsored by Elsevier Limited (awarded under the auspices of IUTAM)

Elsevier Limited has established the Rodney Hill Prize in Solid Mechanics.  This prize is to be awarded in recognition of outstanding research in the field of solid mechanics. The prize is to consist of a plaque and a check for $25,000 (twenty-five thousand US Dollars). The prize is to be awarded every 4 years, to coincide with the quadrennial International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ICTAM). The first prize is to be awarded at the ICTAM in Adelaide 2008, and a subsequent prize to be awarded at the following ICTAM.

This proposal has been welcomed both by the Editors of the Elsevier journals in solid mechanics and by the Bureau and the Executive Committee of the Congress Committee (XCCC) of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM).

The further conditions for awarding of the prize are as follows:

1. The prize is to be awarded on each occasion to a single individual (and not shared between two or more). No individual should win the prize more than once.
2. The research recognized by the award shall normally have been published in one or more papers (possibly, but by no means necessarily, in the EJSM) during the ten-year period prior to the date of the award (e.g. during the period 1998-2007 inclusive for the prize to be awarded in 2008). The intention is that younger researchers should be as eligible for consideration as those who are more established, and that the work recognized by awarding of the prize should be of great current interest (representing, for example, an emerging field of application of solid mechanics, or a significant breakthrough in an established branch of the subject). Attention may also be paid to the researcher's effectiveness at communicating ideas.
3. The recipient of the prize shall deliver a Prize Lecture at the ICTAM as scheduled in the program for that purpose; the award will be presented prior to the lecture.
4. The lecture shall be published in the Elsevier journal of the awardee's choosing (as well as in the Congress Proceedings at the awardee's discretion), and shall be made freely available on the journal website.
5. The Prize shall be awarded by a Committee drawn from the research community in solid mechanics. The Selection Committee should consist of 4 members appointed by the IUTAM Bureau and constituted as follows: two chosen by Elsevier Limited; one chosen by the Bureau of IUTAM; and one chosen by the XCCC of IUTAM. One of the members will be asked by the Bureau to serve as chair of the Selection Committee.

Procedure for the Prize to be awarded in 2008:

The procedures adopted for selection of the awardee are:

1. A Committee, constituted as above, shall be appointed by 30th August 2007, to select the winner of the prize to be awarded at ICTAM 22, Adelaide, August 2008.
2. This Committee shall agree on the form of the Announcement of the Prize, and invite nominations (self-nominations not being permitted) from the Editors and Editorial Advisory Boards of the Elsevier Journal in Solid Mechanics, from the Congress Committee of IUTAM, and from the community at large.
3. A nomination should include a brief curriculum vitae (either narrative or outline in form, but no more than one page in length) of the candidate being nominated, a list of his/her publications during the period 1998-2007 with up to 10 of particular distinction being marked by an asterisk, and a brief (no more than one page) statement of the case for making the award to the particular nominee.
4. Nominations should be submitted via email to Professor Dick van Campen, IUTAM Secretary General, at d.h.v.campen@tue.nl no later than 20th October 2007.
5. The Committee should draw up a short list by correspondence, and elect the prize-winner at a meeting scheduled for this purpose before 30th November 2007, in order to allow time to ensure his/her participation at ICTAM 22 in Adelaide in August 2008. The decision of the Committee will be final.
6. Elsevier Limited, the Bureau of IUTAM and the Congress Committee should be immediately informed of the result, and the result should be publicly announced when the Program for the Congress is made available on the Congress web-site.
7. The Selection Committee should be dissolved upon announcement of the Prize.
8. These procedures should be reviewed, in the light of experience, prior to the appointment of a new Committee to select the subsequent prizewinner.

The journals in Solid Mechanics published by Elsevier Ltd:

• Journal of the Mechanics of Physics & Solids
• International Journal of Solids & Structures
• Mechanics of Materials
• European Journal of Mechanics - A (Solids)
• Engineering Fracture Mechanics
• International Journal of Plasticity
• International Journal of Mechanical Sciences
• International Journal of Fatigue
• Theoretical & Applied Fracture Mechanics
• International Journal of Pressure Vessels & Piping
• Mechanics Research Communications