Physics:Mechanician

A mechanician is an engineer or a scientist working in the field of mechanics, or in a related or sub-field: engineering or computational mechanics, applied mechanics, geomechanics, biomechanics, and mechanics of materials. Names other than mechanician have been used occasionally, such as mechaniker and mechanicist.

The term mechanician is also used by the Irish Navy to refer to junior engine room ratings. In the United Kingdom Royal Navy, Chief Mechanicians and Mechanicians 1st Class were Chief Petty Officers, Mechanicians 2nd and 3rd Class were Petty Officers, Mechanicians 4th Class were Leading Ratings, and Mechanicians 5th Class were Able Ratings. The rate was only applied to certain technical specialists and no longer exists.

In the New Zealand Post Office, which provided telephone service prior to the formation of Telecom New Zealand in 1987, "Mechanician" was a job classification for workers who serviced telephone exchange switching equipment. The term seems to have originated in the era of the 7A Rotary system exchange, and was superseded by "Technician" circa 1975, perhaps because "Mechanician" was no longer considered appropriate after the first 2000 type Step-byStep Strowger switch exchanges began to be introduced in 1952 (in Auckland, at Birkenhead exchange).

It is also the term by which makers of mechanical automata use in reference to their profession.

People who made lasting contributions to mechanics prior to the 20th century

• Ibn al-Haytham: motion
• Galileo Galilei: notion of strength
• Robert Hooke: Hooke's law
• Isaac Newton: Newton's laws, law of gravitation
• Guillaume Amontons: laws of friction
• Leonhard Euler: buckling, rigid body dynamics
• Jean le Rond d'Alembert: d'Alembert's principle, Wave equation
• Joseph Louis Lagrange: Lagrangian mechanics
• Pierre-Simon Laplace: effects of surface tension
• Sophie Germain: elasticity
• Siméon Denis Poisson: elasticity
• Claude-Louis Navier: elasticity, fluid mechanics
• Augustin Louis Cauchy: elasticity
• Barré de Saint-Venant: elasticity
• William Rowan Hamilton: Hamiltonian mechanics
• George Gabriel Stokes: fluid mechanics
• Gustav Kirchhoff: theory of plates
• Josiah Willard Gibbs: thermodynamics
• Heinrich Rudolf Hertz: contact mechanics

People who made lasting contributions to mechanics and died during or after the 20th century

• Ludwig Burmester: theory of linkages
• Carlo Alberto Castigliano: Elasticity
• Ludwig Prandtl: Fluid mechanics, Plasticity
• Stephen Timoshenko: author of many lasting textbooks, father of modern applied mechanics
• Theodore von Karman: Fluid mechanics, Structural instability
• Richard Edler von Mises: Plasticity
• Geoffrey Ingram Taylor: Fluid mechanics, theory of dislocations.
• Alan Arnold Griffith: founder of Fracture mechanics
• George Rankine Irwin: father of modern Fracture mechanics
• Warner T. Koiter: Solid mechanics, Structural instability
• John D. Eshelby: inclusion in elastic body

Honors and awards

by European Mechanics Society [1],

• Euromech Fellow [2]
• Solid and Fluid Mechanics Prizes [3]

by Applied Mechanics Division, American Society of Mechanical Engineers

• Timoshenko Medal
• Koiter Medal
• Drucker Medal
• Thomas K. Caughey Dynamics Award
• Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Award
• Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award

by American Society of Civil Engineers

• Theodore von Karman Medal, ASCE

by Society of Engineering Science, Inc.

• Eringen Medal
• William Prager Medal in Solid Mechanics
• G. I. Taylor Medal in Fluid Mechanics

See also

• Applied mechanics
• Mechanics
• Geomechanics
• Biomechanics
• Materials Science and Engineering
• Structural analysis
• Fluid Mechanics

External links

• iMechanica, news and views of interest to mechanicians and their friends.
• Homepage of the ASME International Applied Mechanics Division
• Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Mechanician Career Description
• The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive