Raymond D. Mindlin

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Raymond David Mindlin (born September 17, 1906 in New York City , † November 22, 1987 in Hanover (New Hampshire) ) was an American mechanical engineer.

Mindlin studied from 1924 at Columbia University , where he made his bachelor's degree in 1931 and his degree in civil engineering (CE) in 1932. From 1933 to 1935 he attended several summer courses in theoretical mechanics with Stephen Timoshenko at the University of Michigan . In 1936 he received his doctorate from Columbia University . Then he was assistant there, from 1938 instructor, 1940 assistant professor, 1945 associate professor and 1947 professor (from 1967 as James Kip Finch professor ). In 1975 he retired.

During World War II he made important contributions to the development of proximity fuses (proximity fuse) on the Applied Physics Laboratory in Silver Springs (Maryland) , for which he received the Presidential Medal for Merit after the war.

He is known, among other things, for Mindlin's problem in elasticity theory , the question of pressure distribution in the elastic half-space due to a point load below the surface. He gave the solution in his dissertation in 1936, generalizing older treatments of the subject of point load on an elastic half-space by Kelvin and Boussinesq . The problem has applications in geotechnical engineering, where he also dealt with the problem of stress distribution around tunnels. Later he also dealt with wave propagation and vibrations in isotropic and anisotropic elastic plates , wave propagation in cylinders, theory of piezoelectric resonators and crystal lattices, stress optics , granular media and theory of friction.

Mindlin was a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (1973), the National Academy of Engineering (1966), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1958), the Acoustical Society of America (1963), the American Society of Civil Engineers (1962) , of which he became an honorary member in 1969. In 1946 he received the Presidential Medal for Merit , in 1979 the National Medal of Science , in 1961 the ASCE's von Karman Medal and in 1964 the Tymoshenko Medal . In 1975 he received an honorary doctorate from Northwestern University .

Daniel Drucker is one of his doctoral students .

The Raymond D. Mindlin Medal of the ASCE is named in his honor.

literature

  • H. Deresiewicz, MP Bieniek, FL DiMaggio (Editor): The Collected Papers of Raymond D. Mindlin. 2 volumes, Springer-Verlag, 1989.
  • George Herrmann (Editor) RD Mindlin and Applied Mechanics. Pergamon Press, 1974
  • Mindlin: An introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Vibrations of Elastic Plates. World Scientific 2007 (Editor J. Yang)
  • Karl-Eugen Kurrer : The History of the Theory of Structures. Searching for Equilibrium , Ernst & Sohn 2018, p. 1033 (biography), ISBN 978-3-433-03229-9

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mindlin: Forces at a point in the interior of a semi-infinite solid. In: Physics. Volume 7, 1936, pp. 195-202. Physics will later become the Journal of Applied Physics .
  2. ^ Mindlin: Stress distribution around a tunnel. In: Transactions ASCE. Volume 104, 1939, pp. 1714-1718.
personal data
SURNAME Mindlin, Raymond D.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mindlin, Raymond David (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American engineer
DATE OF BIRTH 17th September 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH November 22, 1987
Place of death Hanover, New Hampshire