The American Society of Mechanical Engineers Spirit

Abstract

Of great importance is the innovative and enduring influence that a well-organized professional society may have on the development of a science. This is the case of mechanical engineering with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. As documented in this chapter, this society provided a specific forum to its members at a spot-on time. It brought a spirit that permeated many American works in continuum mechanics. This may be described as: good modelling (without too much abstraction and unnecessary formalism), good applied mathematics providing real applicable solutions with numbers and curves, and a specific interest in the relationship of these solutions with experimental facts. The prominent figure obviously is the founder of the Applied Mechanics Division of the ASME, Stephen P. Timoshenko. For easiness in presentation, a few most influential centres are highlighted in this chapter. These are Stanford (with Timoshenko himself), the M.I.T (with Eric Reissner), Brown (with William Prager) and Columbia (with Raymond Mindlin). Each of these is most representative of identified avenues of research: advanced strength of materials, mathematics applied to problems of engineering, tremendous and contagious developments in the theory of plasticity, and accurate dynamical theory of structural elements (e.g., plates and shells) and coupled fields (electroelasticity). This was to swarm all over the USA and then the whole world community of mechanics.