Raymond D. Mindlin
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Raymond David Mindlin (1906-1987) was one of the greatest mechanicians of the 20th century. He had made seminal contributions to many branches of applied mechanics, applied physics, and engineering sciences.
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[edit] Education
Mindlin was born on September 17, 1906, in New York City, the second of three sons of Henry, a prosperous businessman, and Beatrice (née Levy). In 1924 he enrolled at Columbia University, beginning an association with the University that was to last for more than half a century. Four years later (during which time he distinguished himself as a sprinter on the varsity track team) he received the first of his four earned degrees, a B.A. followed by a B.S. in 1931, and in 1932 by a C.E. and the Illig medal for "proficiency in scholarship." During his graduate study, Mindlin attended a series of summer courses organized by Stephen Timoshenko in 1933, '34, and '35, and there is no doubt that the experience at Ann Arbor served to confirm him in his choice of his life's work.
[edit] Career
For his doctoral research Mindlin set himself a fundamental problem in theoretical elasticity: determining the stresses in an elastic half-space subjected to a sub-surface point load. Working without any guidance at Columbia, he succeeded in finding the solution by employing the method of nuclei of strain. The results, nowadays referred to as "Mindlin's problem", represent a generalization of the two classical 19th century solutions respectively associated with the names of Kelvin and Boussinesq, and have become the basis for analytical formulations widely employed in geotechnical engineering. At Timoshenko's urging, in order to establish the author's priority of discovery, a summary of the results was dispatched to the Comptes Rendus of the Académie des Sciences in Paris, noted for almost instantaneous publication, where it appeared in September of 1935. The full paper was published in Physics (now the Journal of Applied Physics) in 1936, the year Mindlin received the Ph.D. degree.
Mindlin remained an assistant for another two years, at which point he was elevated to instructor in civil engineering, and only in 1940 did he receive promotion to assistant professor.
In 1942 Mindlin was co-opted by the Applied Physics Laboratory in Silver Spring, Maryland, an institution engaged in naval ordnance work. There he played a significant role in the development of the proximity fuze, one of the major achievements in the scientific war effort. For his part in its success, he was presented with the Presidential Medal for Merit, the highest decoration awarded to civilians, shortly after the end of the war.
He came back to Columbia in 1945 as an associate professor, and two years later attained the rank of professor. In 1967 he was appointed James Kip Finch Professor of Applied Science, the first holder of a chair named in honor of the patron and protector of his days as a graduated student. He was to hold this post until his retirement in 1975.
In 1974, in anticipation of his imminent retirement, he was presented with a published book, entitled R.D. Mindlin and Applied Mechanics. In eight substantial chapters, by fifteen of his erstwhile students, this novel kind of Festschrift contains summaries of those areas on which Mindlin's own endeavors have exercised a profound and lasting effect.
Mindlin died on November 22, 1987, in Hanover, New Hampshire.
[edit] Contributions to research
The Collected Papers of Raymon D. Mindlin (2 vols, Springer-Verlag, 1989) collected 129 papers authored or co-authored by Mindlin. The major contributions of Mindlin were summarized in 8 papers by his students and friends in a book dedicated to his retirement, R.D. Mindlin and Applied Mechanics (Pergamon, 1974). These include:
- Photoelasticity and experimental mechanics
- Classical three-dimensional elasticity (e.g., Mindlin's problem)
- Generalized elastic continua (Strain-gradient and couple-stress theory)
- Frictional contact and granular media
- Waves and vibrations in isotropic and anisotropic plates (Mindlin's Plate Theory)
- Wave propagation in rods and cylinders
- Theory of electro-elasticity and piezoelectric crystal resonators
- Crystal lattice theories
[edit] Service
Mindlin served with devotion the profession which he made his life's work, through his research, his teaching, his advisory capacity to numerous government agencies, and his activities in various scientific and technical societies. Among the latter, mention is warranted of the following positions he held at various times: In the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), chairman, Applied Mechanics Division; member, Publications Committee, Engineering Societies Monographs Committee, Advisory Board of Applied Mechanics Reviews. In the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), chairman, Committee on Applied Mechanics of the Structural Engineering Division (precursor of the Engineering Mechanics Division). In the Society for Experimental Stress Analysis (SESA), co-founder and president; member, executive committee. In the American Institute of Physics, associate editor, Journal of Mathematical Physics. Also, he was member of: the U.S. National Committee for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics; the General Assembly of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM); the American Physical Society.
[edit] Awards and honors
To be sure, his remarkable intellectual fecundity and gentle personality did not go unappreciated by his peers, and recognition came in the form of copious honors and awards. He was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1958), of the ASME (1962), and of the Acoustical Society of America (1963); member of the National Academy of Engineering (1966) and of the National Academy of Sciences (1973); and Honorary Member of the ASME (1969). He received the Research Prize (1958) and the von Karman Medal (1961) of the ASCE; the Timoshenko Medal (1964) and the ASME Medal (1976) from the ASME; the Trent-Crede Award of the Acoustical Society of America (1971); the Frocht Award of the SESA (1974); the Great Teacher Award (1960) and the Egleston Medal (1971) from Columbia University; and an Honorary D.Sc. degree from Northwestern University (1975); also, a Naval Ordnance Development Award (1945) and the C. B. Sawyer Award of the Army Electronics Command (1967). Remarkably, prestigious as these are, all but one were sandwiched between his most noteworthy honors, both bestowed by the U.S. Government: the Presidential Medal for Merit (1946), as noted earlier the highest civilian decoration of the second World War, and his ultimate accolade, the National Medal of Science, which he received in 1979.
[edit] Students
Lastname, First name Degree, Year Occupation
Bleustein, Jeffrey Ph.D. 1965 Harley & Davidson
Bogdanoff, John Ph.D. 1949 Purdue
Brady, Kevin DES 1964 Bell Labs
Cheng, David Ph.D. 1944 CUNY
Deresiewicz, Herbert Ph.D. 1952 Columbia
Drucker, Daniel Ph.D. 1938 UIUC
Duffy, Jacques Ph.D. 1957 Brown
Eshel, Nachman Ph.D. 1965 CUNY
Forray, Martin Ph.D. 1955 C. W. Post
Fox, Edward Ph.D. 1958 RPI
Gazis, Denas Ph.D. 1957 IBM
Gong, Chung DES 1970 Ebsco
Goodman, Lawrence Ph.D. 1949 Univ. of Minnesota
Haines, Daniel Ph.D. 1968 Univ. of South Carolina
Hoppmann, W. H. Ph.D. 1947 Univ. of South Carolina
Huang, Y. T. Ph.D. 1961 Huang & Associate
Kane, Thomas R. Ph.D. 1953 Stanford
Kaul, Raj Ph.D. 1963 SUNY Buffalo
Lee, Peter C. Y. DES 1963 Princeton
Lubkin, J. L. Ph.D. 1964 Michigan State
Lubowe, Anthony DES 1961 Bell Labs
McNiven, Hugh Ph.D. 1958 Berkeley
McCoy, John Catholic Univ.
Mediek, Mathew Ph.D. 1957 Michigan State
Newman, E. G. IBM
Pao, Yih-Hsing Ph.D. 1959 Cornell, now in Taiwan
Robinston, Kenneth ITEK Corp.
Rongved, Leif Ph.D. 1953 Bell Labs
Schwartz, Jeremy DES 1969 Naval Weapons Lab
Tasi, James Ph.D. 1961 State University of New York at Stony Brook
Tiersten, Harry Ph.D. 1961 RPI
[edit] References
- The Collected Papers of Raymond D. Mindlin, edited by H. Deresiewicz, M.P. Bieniek, F.L. DiMaggio, Springer-Verlag, 1989.
- R.D. Mindlin and Applied Mechanics, edited by George Herrmann, Pergamon Press, 1974.
- An Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Vibrations of Elastic Plates, by R D Mindlin, edited by Jiashi Yang, World Scientific, 2007
