John D. Eshelby

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John Douglas Eshelby (21 December 1916 - 28 December 1988) was a scientist in micromechanics. His work has shaped the fields of defect mechanics and micromechanics of inhomogeneous solids for fifty years and provided the basis for the quantitative analysis of the controlling mechanisms of plastic deformation and fracture.

Eshelby was born at Puddington Cheshire, the son of Captain Alan John Eshelby and his wife Phoebe Mason Hutchinson. He was educated at St Cyprian's School and was due to go to Charterhouse School but appears to have taken a place somewhere else. He was then at Bristol University. Eshelby taught himself the theory of elasticity for his thesis on ‘Stationary and moving dislocations’. After holding several early research posts he worked in the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University and was elected a Fellow of Churchill College. He was then appointed Reader in the Faculty of Materials (Theory of Materials) at the University of Sheffield where he became Professor in 1971. He was awarded by the Timoshenko Medal in 1977. He retired in 1982 and the Eshelby Memorial Bursary was founded in his memory.

The scientific phenomenon called "Eshelby's inclusion" is named after this scientist, and points at a polyhedral subdomain in an infinite homogeneous body, subjected to a uniform transformation strain. Eshelby was clear and amusing as a lecturer, and prepared his lectures with great care, but was not keen on doing experimental work. He was well versed in Sanskrit (among other classical languages)and was an avid second-hand book buyer.

[edit] Bibliography (incomplete)

• A Tentative Theory of Metallic Whisker Growth University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois Received 4 June 1953 The American Physical Society
• The Determination of the Elastic Field of an Ellipsoidal Inclusion - Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A241 (1957), p 376
• Collected Works of J. D. Eshelby, Mechanics of Defects and Inhomogeneities, Springer (2006), Xanthippi Markenscoff and Anurag Gupta (Eds.) ISBN 1-4020-4416-X