1993 Timoshenko Medal Lecture by John L. Lumley

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.

I have heard a story about L. M. Milne-Thomson, whom we all know for his work on theoretical hydro- and aerodynamics. Many years ago he was asked to speak after dinner at a grand banquet in the Washington area. He may have been given an award; I am not sure. The banquet was attended by wives in elegant dresses, and there were naval officers of flag rank in class A uniforms. To everyone's surprise, he said that he wanted to give a technical lecture. After a short delay they found a tiny portable blackboard, and as he covered it with equations, he had two full admirals erasing for him in relays, tossing the eraser back and forth to each other over his head. I won't do that this evening.

Instead, I want to talk about becoming a scientist and being one, during the latter part of the twentieth century, in the United States. I realize that, when people reach my age, they think that anything they have to say is golden. I am reminded of Eric Walker, former president of Penn State. When he retired, he started writing a column in the local newspaper called "Now it's my turn". Many of us thought it had already been his turn for entirely too long, and his column was not too popular. I will try to spare you that syndrome as much as possible, but some of it is unavoidable. If the Medal Committee had any decency, they would not require a speech, and we would all be spared.

My father was an architectural engineer, and a do-it-yourself craftsman, car buff and spare-time artist. My earliest recollections are of being allowed to wash the spokes of the artillery wheels on our Hudson, while Dad polished the car with the chamois. We always had a car that was a little bit special, a little different. As we drove around Detroit, Dad would point out buildings that he had had a hand in designing or building. On Saturday mornings I remember being taken to completed buildings and building sites, and having the various flaws pointed out to me. Dad was a very demanding man; everything had to be just so. Ann Landers recently had a letter describing engineers as uncompromising, inflexible and perfectionist. That was certainly Dad. One of his friends said that Charlie was a wonderful guy, but he would hate like Hell to work for him. For years my mother talked about the dog house Dad built. It was large enough for a child to play in, with insulation and a shingled roof, and a baffle at the door to keep the cold wind out. It was a lot better built than many houses for people - certainly than the ones in Dade county in Florida. Dad never did manage to teach me how to do lettering and make arrowheads on drawings in a thoroughly professional manner, though God knows he tried. He also tried to get me always to make a complete set of drawings before I fabricated something; it never took - I always preferred to plan the project in my head, and make modifications as I went along; very unprofessional. Dad had ambiguous feelings about engineering, and from time to time thought he might have been happier as an architect. He once asked me if I was prepared to spend my life among these gray, inarticulate people. That's not entirely unfair, though I have grown rather fond of many of these people, who are only gray if you don't look beneath the surface. And there are not many, but enough poets and artists among us, so I am happy.

This is really how I got into engineering. I have always loved machinery, making things, building things. But I have spent my life as a research scientist, which is not quite the same thing. It seems that when I work on a problem, even a practical problem, I turn it into a research project; I chop it up finer and finer until there is nothing left but the fundamentals. In fact, half the theses I have supervised were experimental - a good experiment is a little closer to engineering; you usually have an opportunity to design some piece of equipment, and see it come into being. That, of course, is not quite the same as making it yourself. Evenings and weekends I restore old cars out in the barn - that satisfies the urge to make things. It also satisfies the craftsman-like desire to design in your head, with the materials and tools at hand, and modify as you go along. I get tired of too much calculation, too much precision, which I get enough of professionally. In addition, what I do professionally has a very delayed payoff - something of the order of twenty years or more. It is nice to do something that provides shorter-term gratification. It is also peaceful out in the barn.

There is less dichotomy than you might think, however, between what I do professionally and what I do evenings and weekends. I believe it was von Karman who said "There is nothing so practical as a good theory". I have always felt when constructing a very mathematical theory, that I was constructing something real and practical, to explain something physical, to make design possible. I have always been deeply offended by the attitude we meet so often, "it's just a theory", although I am certainly used to it.

More important, perhaps, I have always wanted to be involved with real things. That is, I have never wanted to abstract what I do too much, remove it too far from the real world, from the application. When I was in graduate school, it was rather nice to work on clean, neat problems that were somewhat removed from the real world. When I got my first job with George Wislicenus at Penn State, I was connected with the Garfield Thomas Water Tunnel, as well as with the Aerospace Engineering Department. The water tunnel is the world's largest high speed water tunnel, and is a part of the Applied Research Laboratory, that Penn State operates for the Naval Sea Systems Command. The Laboratory is responsible for various aspects of undersea warfare. At the Water Tunnel I was quickly immersed in the very practical problems arising from torpedoes and submarines: primarily various schemes for reduction of turbulent skin friction drag, and the many problems connected with testing in the water tunnel. At first I was a little appalled by the complex interdisciplinary problems. I had been unconsciously trained to be a bit disdainful of real problems; somehow, if you were concerned with real problems, it suggested that you didn't have the wit to find the fundamental problem underlying the real problem. It seemed that, to be socially acceptable in my circles, you never mentioned the real problem, but only the fundamental problem that you had abstracted from it. I discovered fairly fast that this was not such a straightforward matter, and that the business of reducing a real problem to a series of connected fundamental problems, all simple enough to resolve, without throwing out the baby with the bath water, was very challenging. Of course, in this reduction process you have to clip away everything that seems extraneous, hoping to be left with something that, while only a skeleton, still shares enough with the real problem to shed light on it. I think my colleagues often thought that I had pruned a bit too much, leaving a stunted stub that could not survive. However, even if they could no longer see the connection, I always saw the theoretical result as still directly connected to the real world. I also quickly came to see what a tremendously rich environment this was, how stimulating, how many problems there were to solve. I think it is a great mistake to get too far away from the applications; you dry up, you starve.

In the last few years I have managed to combine my hobby and my profession. When I was a relatively junior faculty member, I taught undergraduates. As I became more senior, however, I taught only graduate students, and for many years this was true. When I went to Cornell, I was told that I would have to teach undergraduates, but in fact I was never asked, and I never volunteered. Three years ago, however, I was made an offer I could not refuse, and I am now responsible for the undergraduate course in automotive engineering, with between fifty and one hundred students. This is one of our capstone design courses, and is a nice synthesis of much of what the kids have learned in their other courses. It is fun to teach, and I enjoy the undergraduates, although they still frighten me a bit. The young can be very judgmental and demanding. I think it helps to have raised some children. The first year I taught the course, my teaching evaluations were appalling - I hope the dean never sees them. I must say they were richly deserved. Now, however, the evaluations have substantially improved, and they no longer give me nightmares.

As I have gotten older, I have found that more and more I am a research administrator. I am sure I am not unique - this happens to all of us, but it is a bit sad. That is, I have less and less opportunity to do things myself. I am supervising others who are having all the fun. The world of science in which I live and work is structured differently now from the way it was when I was young. The world itself is changing, but of course it is also changing for me because I am getting older. The changes are also not uniform from country to country. In any event, at present, at my age, in this country, a successful scientist must have a large operation, which means a hand-full of contracts, students, post-docs, colleagues, visitors. This is a nice environment for the people working in it - I try to make it that way, recalling my earlier years. I certainly was very grateful for the environment that my thesis advisor created around us. Mostly that is simply a matter of collecting an interesting group of people, and letting them interact. I was an only child, and when I was little I became accustomed to playing by myself. Probably because of that, what attracted me to science was the pleasure of working alone at a problem uninterruptedly, following thoughts to their conclusions, trying various possibilities. I now recognize that that is not always an efficient way to work - it sometimes makes more sense to break off, and sleep on a problem, or do something unrelated, or go to the library and read something that someone else has said on the subject. That was something I never wanted to do when I was young - I didn't care what someone else had said - I wanted to do it myself. In any event, this lovely environment for everybody else is not really a nice environment for me. Whether it is desirable or not, uninterrupted work is rarely possible for me. I function in the interrupt mode, which I understand is the norm for managers. In addition, I do virtually nothing myself, but must act collaboratively with others, and at second hand. This makes me feel somewhat like a child who is forced to share his toys.

Gertrude Stein compared politicians to garbage collectors; they do necessary, but not very exciting, things that keep the place running, and are not really noticed until the system breaks down and the garbage is not collected. Administration is a lot like that, even research administration. A lot of what I do these days is the moral equivalent of garbage collection.

When I came to Cornell, of course I no longer had a connection with the water tunnel and its sophisticated but practical problems. At Cornell, I have found a certain satisfaction in being an expert witness and consultant. The problems that I solve in this capacity are reminiscent of the problems that I enjoyed resolving when I was younger. They are practical problems, usually complex and interdisciplinary, which must be broken up and abstracted to be resolved. This process involves some technology transfer, since I am often applying fundamental things that my research has taught me over the years to industrial or environmental problems.

Sometimes it is like detective work. Let me tell you about something I worked on last year, that will illustrate how a complex, interdisciplinary practical problem can lead to fundamental problems. This is in the area of atmospheric turbulence, in which I worked for some years at Penn State. Some of the material may be unfamiliar, but I think you will find the logical chain interesting. My client was a sheep farmer whose sheep seemed to be dying as a result of emissions of sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide from a heavy water plant. Both sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide are toxic in sufficiently high concentrations. The farmer was just a kilometer and a half from the plant, which is very close, but any normal calculations suggested that his sheep were receiving concentrations at a level considered completely safe. In addition, monitoring stations placed near his farm indicated low concentrations. I must explain how Hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide happened to be emitted. Hydrogen sulfide is used in the process of making heavy water, and once a year the towers in which the heavy water is made have to be cleaned. After as much hydrogen sulfide as possible has been removed from the towers, the majority of the remainder is burned on a flare stack and converted to sulfur dioxide. The plant was right on the edge of one of the great lakes, and the stack was close to the water. After several false starts, we finally realized that the on-shore breeze from the lake, during the spring and summer, was stably stratified, and thus not turbulent, from traveling over the cooler lake water for hundreds of kilometers. The top of the stack was in this stably stratified air. Thus, the stack plume did not disperse. The cool, stable air, when it started over the warmer land, began to grow an internal turbulent boundary layer, and when this reached the height of the stack plume, the plume was sucked into the first downgoing eddy, and taken to the surface. The distances were about right so that the place where this happened was right over my client's farm, and the first descending eddy was probably caused by his cool, insulated farm buildings. His sheep were thus getting the stack plume at nearly full strength. The plume, of course, did not descend on the monitoring station. The matter was complicated by the fact that the sulfur dioxide was considerably heavier than air, and could lie on the ground in hollows among the vegetation, where the sheep would be immersed in it.

This general situation is called shoreline fumigation, and is well-known to meteorologists. However, they are only familiar with the average effects. The phenomenon of the descent of the instantaneous plume to ground level, with its associated high instantaneous concentrations, has not been measured. One of my colleagues has now submitted a proposal for laboratory measurements of instantaneous concentrations in this situation. In addition, the pooling of the sulfur dioxide at ground level, and the probability of its remaining for various periods, was a nice little fundamental problem that was fun to solve.

Everything has its down side, and I must admit I don't much like being questioned in hearings. In addition, this was all part of an environmental impact hearing in connection with a request for license renewal for the heavy water plant. When it became evident that my client had a case that would stand up, the request for license renewal was withdrawn. As a result, the outcome is moot. Also, although I work hard at communicating my results, I sometimes suspect that my clients find my name and credentials more useful to them than my findings. That's all right - at least I had fun.

Well, I hope I have kept you awake. Let me thank you again for this wonderful honor you have bestowed on me.

A Virtual Tour of the 1906 Great Earthquake in Google Earth

The California earthquake of April 18, 1906 (one century ago today) ranks as one of the most significant earthquakes of all time. Today, its importance comes more from the wealth of scientific knowledge derived from it than from its sheer size --it marked the dawn of modern science of earthquakes.

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently provides a virtual tour utilizing the geographic interactive software Google Earth to explain the scientific, engineering, and human dimensions of this earthquake. This virtual tour can help you visualize and understand the causes and effects of this and future earthquakes.

Enjoy this virtual tour to explore how Google Earth (and other new softwares...) can facilitate and improve the way we teach and conduct research.

Organic LED could replace light bulb?

Lighting accounts for about 22% of the electricity consumed in buildings in the United States, and 40% of that amount is eaten up by inefficient incandescent light bulbs. The search for economical light sources has been a hot topic.

Recently, scientists have made important progress towards making white organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) commercially viable as light source. As reported in a latest Nature article, even at an early stage of development this new source is up to 75% more fficient than today's incandescent sources at similar brightnesses. The traditional light bulb's days could be numbered.

Read media report here.

A new wiki is set up to solve the Millennium Problems in Mathematics

This entry in Slashdot links to the new wiki, from which one can at least learn what these problems are, as well as their prize tags. The 139 comments in Slashdot once again show the issues concerning any wikiscience project.

Nanogenerators created by a team led by Zhonglin Wang

1989 Timoshenko Medal Lecture by Bernard Budiansky

Professor Bernard Budiansky delivered this lecture at the Applied Mechanics Dinner of the 1989 Winter Annual Meeting of ASME, in San Francisco, California. He died in 1999, and his colleagues at Harvard University have published a memorial minute.

Reflections
Bernard Budiansky

Many thanks for honoring me with the Timoshenko Medal. Forty-five years ago, fresh out of college with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, I started my first job at Langley Field, Virginia, with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and my very first assignment was to learn about buckling of plates from Timoshenko’s famous book on the theory of elastic stability. Timoshenko’s extraordinary influence on research and education in applied mechanics all over the world, and his central role in this country, needs no reiteration. Like so many others, I was seduced by his book into a life-long infatuation with buckling problems, and so to receive this award bearing his name from my fellow applied mechanikers is very heart-warming, and I am very grateful.

On occasions like this, it is traditional for the speaker to grapple with cosmic issues of research, educations, scholarship and the like, even though he would feel much more comfortable giving a technical lecture. One distinguished colleague managed to rattle me thoroughly by saying – I think mischievously – that he looked forward to my “words of inspiration”; on the other hand, John Hutchinson simply suggested that I keep it short.

Not only will I follow John’s advice, I will also avoid major matters of science and technology, because I neither have any profundities to peddle, not do I wish to contribute any new cliché’s or buzzwords to these subjects. The present supply is quite adequate. I have to admit that I was really impressed the first time I heard the phrase “the cutting edge of technology” (even though the imagery did no quite match that of Tom Lehrer’s immortal line about “sliding down the razor blade of life”) but after several hundred repetitions, the effect has grown dull. Words and phrases invented inside the Beltway do spread like wildfire. One popular Washington proverb I can do without is: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” This is a perfect prescription for the technological stagnation that is often deplored in the next breath. In the last few years, we have been deluged with “initiatives” – Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), Universities Research Initiative (URI), Accelerated Research Initiative (ARI), and so on. My current favorite is the recently announced BNI – Bold New Initiative – which sounds exciting, but I have forgotten what it’s for. Heavy phrases like technological innovation, manufacturing productivity, international competitiveness, and environmental disaster are on everybody’s lips. I certainly do not wish to demean either the importance of the issues they represent, or the seriousness with which the problems are being confronted. However, I am sure you will be relieved to learn that these topics are beyond the scope of the present talk.

What I will do is reflect a bit about applied mechanics and applied mechanikers. At the same time, I will try to avoid excessive introspection, which I consider to be a dangerous practice that can lead to a morbid preoccupation with the meaning of life. Fortunately, it seems to me that most of us in applied mechanics do enjoy a fairly un-self-conscious approach to our work, relatively free of subjective inner contemplation. To varying degrees, we simply love to do research in our fields, we accept the frustrations, false starts, and dead ends that go with the territory, and do not make a habit of either melancholy self-doubt or manic self-adulation. And so, to those who assert that the unexamined life is not worth living, I say, speak for yourselves, and let me get back to work!

But if research in applied mechanics is such a happy enterprise, why are we occasionally afflicted with the Rodney Dangerfield syndrome, namely: “We don’t get any respect!”? We share a monumental intellectual legacy of knowledge and achievement, and our contributions to many branches of engineering and applied sciences are central, vital, and growing. And yet, the visibility and recognition of applied mechanics as a coherent discipline has been diminishing, not only in the eyes of the general public, where it has always been negligible, but within the scientific and technical establishments as well. Starting at the top, applied mechanics as a field of learning and research is surely terra incognita to the President of the United States, his cabinet, most members of Congress, the CEO’s of the Fortune 500, all but a handful of university presidents, and about a quarter of a billion other Americans, including even the Vice-President. University departments or division tagged with the applied mechanics name seem to be in a process of extinction. With some exceptions, governmental funding agencies tend not to assign the applied mechanics label to the research they support. Neither the National Academy of Engineering nor the National Academy of Sciences nor the American Association for the Advancement of Science contains a section in applied mechanics. I have yet to see the words “applied mechanics” in the science pages of any newspaper or newsmagazine, and I suspect that they have rarely, if ever, appeared in general science publications like Science or Nature or Scientific American. But we do exist! We are like members of a closely knit secret society, with clandestine cells in mechanical, civil, chemical, and aerospace engineering, in geophysics, in materials science, in biotechnology – but we’re quite ready and willing to have our cover blown!

There are two obvious reasons for this lack of visibility, one sublime and one ridiculous. Our very success in promulgating the role of applied mechanics within such a large number and variety of fields has led to the seamless integration of substantial parts of applied mechanics into the various fields I mentioned. This, of course, is very welcome. But as a natural consequence, subsequent research in such an incorporated segment of applied mechanics tends to assume the identity of its host. The absurd reason for our lack of status is that we still don’t know what to call ourselves! Can it be that this is the crux of the problem? We are not the only group whose activity cuts broadly across traditional disciplinary boundaries, but mathematicians, engineers, physicists, biologists, and computer scientists proudly retain their identities, no matter how scattered and diverse their working environments, and, of course, their titles provoke instant recognition. But what are we? In informal conversation, “applied mechaniker” is all right, but is clearly too whimsical and slang-ey for general acceptance. Some years ago, Norman Goodier urged the adoption of the appellation “applied mechanicist” but this never really took hold, and “applied mechanician” doesn’t seem to make it either.

Well, so what? Is this a true identity crisis, or just an annoying pinprick to our collective ego? After all, we do respond with acceptable answers when our neighbors ask us what we do for a living, or when we have to fill in the blanks labeled “occupation” on our income-tax forms or passport application. I suppose most of us say “engineers”, some say “mathematician”, others (like Irwin Corey) simply say “professor”, or “educator”, or “geophysicist”, or something else as respectable. The fact is, we all do have at least one profession we can honestly claim besides our beloved applied mechanics. I am reminded of Josephine Baker’s song “J’ai deux amours, mon pays et Paris”, but the analogy is not apt, because everybody’s heard of Paris! Furthermore, most of us certainly do not want to sever our professional allegiances to the traditional fields. The engineering profession, in particular, has its own serious problems that may be worthy of our attention. And since applied mechanics should be truly interdisciplinary, might not intellectual isolation and sterility be an unhappy consequence of the greater autonomy that would inevitably flow from increased visibility for applied mechanics? And therefore, shouldn’t we leave well-enough alone? Finally, we obviously do enjoy substantial communal ties. Here we are in the Applied Mechanics Division of the ASME, there is a parallel Engineering Mechanics Division of ASCE, we have a National Congress of Applied Mechanics and an International Congress every four years, and we have umpteen journals as outlets for our research publications. So why worry?

I have almost persuaded myself to adopt the Panglossian view that everything has happened for the best – but not quite. First, and maybe foremost, greater visibility would obviously attract more talented young people to applied mechanics, and I know that most of you share my belief that this is very much needed. Next, greater autonomy for groups in applied mechanics could enhance interfield communication, and spark the effective spread of applied mechanics into new areas. (The models for this are the spectacular rise of biomechanics in the last few decades, and the vigorous growth of mechanics in materials science and geophysics.) There’s more: applied mechanics and applied mathematics have gone hand in hand for a long time, with applied mechanics people taking major responsibility for university instruction in applied math. Weaken applied mechanics and you weaken applied mathematics, and this has been happening. In connection with applied math, let me say a word about computing; our applied mechanics community has led, and continues to lead, the exploitation of computers in scientific and technological research. As a long-time addict, I am enthusiastically pro-computer, and I never used to take very seriously the gloomy prediction of some of my uncontaminated colleagues, who deplored the inanities of massive, mindless computations as substitutes for elegant classical analysis, and foresaw the loss of analytical skills that would be induced by excessive reliance on computers. But now I believe that the balance has finally tipped, that applied mathematics in the classical sense, needs rescuing and that strengthening applied mechanics may be the best way to do it. Finally, we need the extra power and freedom that would flow from greater visibility and prestige in order to secure the right to do what I would call pure applied mechanics. Such research is intended to nourish the heart and soul of applied mechanics, and is not particularly meant to be “useful” in any prosaic sense. Its virtues – something funding agencies would, of course, have to judge – would be measured on the basis of depth, beauty, and truth, the same graces that characterize and justify good pure mathematics. Incidentally, I have no patience with the widespread myth that pure math, done without applications in mind inevitably turns out to be “useful”; sometimes it does, but more often, it doesn’t. However, the phony promise of ultimate utility is not necessary to justify support of pure math, and I demand equal treatment for a certain amount of pure applied mechanics!

So if we agree that we should burst the bonds of anonymity, perhaps we should begin by coming to grips with the question of our job description. I could live with either “applied mechanicist” or “applied mechanician”. Why not boldly start using one or the other at every opportunity, and let the better one survive! Then – let’s lobby scientific and technical societies, honorary or otherwise, that have not yet seen the light, to establish applied mechanics divisions! In universities, reverse the slide into oblivion and recommend that establishment of applied mechanics committees across standard departmental lines, maybe empowered to grant degrees as well as give courses! Preach to funding agencies about the merits of interdisciplinary sections of applied mechanics! Give interview, or write popular articles, about applied mechanics and its practitioners! Run for Congress!

Well, enough agitation, which does not fall within my area of expertise, anyhow. To conclude these reflections, I would like to flip quickly though some verbal snapshots of a few of the people who have enriched my professional life. I had a remarkable trio of bosses in my first job at the Structures Research Division of NACA in 1944; Pai-Chuan Hu, a fresh Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from the University of Michigan, whose knowledge and intellect were awesome; Sam Batdorf, a renegade physicist, whose insightful way of thinking about problems in applied mechanics has been an enduring inspiration; and the big boss, the Chief of Structures Gene Lundquist, a great pioneer of structures research, whose legacy as a research leader has been enduring. It was an exciting time at NACA, in those pre-space days of aeronautical research, and my experience there has left me fiercely supportive of scientific civil servants, who are at least as smart and hard-working as those in the private sector, but often are slandered by invidious comparisons. I was lucky to meet and even interact with some famous people at NACA outside my field of structures, like Ed Garrick, Carl Kaplan, and the great aerodynamicists Robert T. Jones and Adolph Busemann, who had independently conceived of swept wings for high-speed flight – Jones in America, Busemann in Germany. Jones told me how to calculate the lift on a swept wing, so that I could go on to study its aeroelasticity. Busemann got sufficiently interested in plasticity to join Lyell Sanders, John Hedgepeth and me in many happy hours of exploration of 6-dimensional stress space. Busemann had a marvelous, infectious technical vocabulary in English; an eavesdropper would have heard us earnestly discussing Humpty-Dumpties, meaning hyperspheres; stalactites, meaning hypervectors; and stalagmites, vectors pointing the other way! When I went to Brown University for graduate study in applied math, what an extraordinary group of professors I had: Prager, Drucker, Carrier, Lee, Handelman, Greenberg, Diaz – all of whom taught me much more than simply the material in their courses. During those early post-war years, Brown attracted a fantastic international brigade of graduate students: among my special buddies were Frithiof Niordsen, Carl Pearson, Jean Kestens, Pei-ping Chen, and Hirsch Cohen – respectively, from Stockholm, Vancouver, Brussels, Peking and Milwaukee. (As you see, I am name-dropping shamelessly.) It has become a cliché that one learns as much from fellow students in graduate school as from faculty – and was this ever true in my case! As I look back over my life in applied mechanics during the decades that followed, I realize that I always think first of people rather than problems. (If this be introspection, make the most of it.) I suppose I love applied mechanikers as well as applied mechanics, and I had better start rationing my sentimental recollections. But I particularly want to mention Eli Sternberg, sadly gone now, our pre-eminent elastician, whose extraordinary charm, wit, and intelligence brightened and blessed us all, and whose friendship I cherished for over forty years; and the incomparable Max Krook, astrophysicist, applied mathematician, and certainly applied mechaniker, who actually knew everything. I have been enormously influenced, instructed and encouraged by Warner Koiter, the sage of Delft; and now, for over a decade, by Tony Evans, the ceramics guru of the western world. A little more introspection, despite by vow: there are many styles of research, none intrinsically superior, but I have to be able to exchange ideas freely, and talk things out, face-to-face with others. Recently, I was stopped by a camera crew doing snap interviews on campus, and was asked what I liked best about Harvard. Without any chance to reflect, I popped out the answer: colleagues. And so it is, even after reflection. How very fortunate I have been to enjoy the company of such a splendid group of kindred spirits in applied mechanics. I owe them more than they would be willing to believe, and here’s who they are: George Carrier and Howard Emmons, recently inducted into the ranks of the emeritus professors; and the remaining hardy band of applied mechanikers Fred Abernathy, John Hutchinson, Dick Kronauer, Tom McMahon, Jim Rice, Lyell Sanders, and Howard Stone. We will do our best to keep and promulgate the faith, and I hope you will too! Thank you.

USNC/TAM Report on Research Fluid Dynamics

Carl Herakovich, the secretary of the US National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (USNC/TAM), has posted the following entry in the Applied Mechanics Google Group today:

The USNC/TAM has just released a report by a Subcommittee on Research Directions in Mechanics, entitled Research in Fluid Dynamics: Meeting National Needs.