Mechanician

"Mechanist" redirects here. For a person who subscribes to the philosophy, see Mechanism (philosophy).

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 British 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.^[1] 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 The term seems to have originated in the era of the 7A Rotary system exchange, and was superseded by "Technician" circa 1960, perhaps because "Mechanician" was no longer considered appropriate after the first Strowger switch exchanges began to be introduced in 1952 (in Auckland, at Birkenhead, New Zealand 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

• Alhazen: attraction between masses, acceleration due to gravity, law of inertia, first law of motion
• Guillaume Amontons: laws of friction
• Augustin Louis Cauchy: elasticity
• Leonhard Euler: buckling, rigid body dynamics
• Galileo Galilei: notion of strength
• Josiah Willard Gibbs: thermodynamics
• William Rowan Hamilton: Hamiltonian mechanics
• Heinrich Rudolf Hertz: contact mechanics
• Robert Hooke: Hooke's law
• Gustav Kirchhoff: theory of plates
• Joseph Louis Lagrange: Lagrangian mechanics
• Pierre-Simon Laplace: effects of surface tension
• Claude-Louis Navier: elasticity, fluid mechanics
• Sophie Germain: elasticity
• Isaac Newton: Newton's laws, law of gravitation
• Siméon Denis Poisson: elasticity
• Saint-Venant: elasticity
• George Gabriel Stokes: fluid mechanics

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

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

Honors and awards

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.

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

Footnotes

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 Geneaology Project
• Mechanician Career Description
• The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive