ASCE Creates Raymond Mindlin Medal
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has created a medal in honor of Professor Emeritus Raymond D. Mindlin ’31, ’32, ’36, who died in 1987 and was a driving force in the SEAS Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics from 1932 to 1975. The Mindlin Medal will recognize outstanding research contributions by an individual to applied solid mechanics and will be awarded for the first time in 2009.
A member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, Professor Mindlin received the National Medal of Science for applied mechanics and mathematics in 1979. He had been awarded the Medal for Merit in 1946, by President Harry S. Truman, for his work in developing the radio proximity fuse, a detonator for weapons used in offensive warfare that was a significant factor in World War II.
Professor Mindlin made pioneering contributions to the field of applied mechanics during his tenure at Columbia University. His research encompassed 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, and crystal lattice theories.
The SEAS Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics has established the Mindlin Lecture to honor his contribution to applied mechanics. SEAS Professor Emeritus Herbert Deresiewicz also wrote a short biography of Professor Mindlin.
