Raymond D. Mindlin

Raymond David Mindlin (New York City, 17 September 1906 – 22 November 1987) was an American mechanical engineer, Professor of Applied Science at Columbia University, and recipient of the 1946 Presidential Medal for Merit and many other awards and honours. He is known as mechanician, who made seminal contributions to many branches of applied mechanics, applied physics, and engineering sciences.

Biography

Education

In 1924 he enrolled at Columbia University, where he received 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 the University of Michigan served to confirm him in his choice of his life's work.

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. 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. His paper was published in Physics (now the Journal of Applied Physics) in 1936, the year Mindlin received his 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, where he contributed in the development of the proximity fuze. For his part in its success, he was presented with the Presidential Medal for Merit.

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 until his retirement in 1975.

Mindlin died on November 22, 1987, in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Awards and honors

Early awarded

• Naval Ordnance Development Award (1945)
• Presidential Medal for Merit (1946),
• Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1958),
• Research Prize (1958) of the ASCE;

In the 1960s

• Great Teacher Award (1960) from Columbia University;
• von Karman Medal of the ASCE (1961)
• Fellow, ASME (1962),
• Fellow, Acoustical Society of America (1963);
• Timoshenko Medal (1964) of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).
• Member, National Academy of Engineering (1966)
• C. B. Sawyer Award of the Army Electronics Command (1967).
• Honorary Member, ASME (1969).

In the 1970s

• Egleston Medal (1971) from Columbia University;
• Trent-Crede Award of the Acoustical Society of America (1971);
• Member, National Academy of Sciences (1973);
• Frocht Award of the SESA (1974);
• Honorary D.Sc. degree from Northwestern University (1975);
• The ASME Medal (1976)
• National Medal of Science, (1979).

Work

Contributions to research

The Collected Papers of Raymond 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

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.

Further reading

• H. Deresiewicz, M.P. Bieniek, F.L. DiMaggio (eds.), The Collected Papers of Raymond D. Mindlin, Springer-Verlag, 1989.
• George Herrmann (ed.), R.D. Mindlin and Applied Mechanics, Pergamon Press, 1974.
• R. D. Mindlin. "An Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Vibrations of Elastic Plates," in: Jiashi Yang (ed.) World Scientific, 2007

External links

• Raymond D. Mindlin at the Mathematics Genealogy Project