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 The term seems to have originated in the era of the 7A Rotary system exchange, and was superseded by "Technician" circa 1975, perhaps because "Mechanician" was no longer considered appropriate after the first 2000 type Step-byStep Strowger switch exchanges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
- Alhazen: attraction between masses, acceleration due to gravity, law of inertia, first law of motion
- Guillaume Amontons: laws of friction
- Augustin Louis Cauchy: elasticity
- Jean le Rond d'Alembert: d'Alembert's principle, Wave equation
- 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
- Barré de Saint-Venant: elasticity
- George Gabriel Stokes: fluid mechanics
People who made lasting contributions to mechanics and died during or after the 20th century
- Carlo Alberto Castigliano: Elasticity (physics)
- 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
- Ludwig Prandtl: Fluid mechanics, Plasticity
- Geoffrey Ingram Taylor: Fluid mechanics, theory of dislocations.
Honors and awards
by European Mechanics Society ,
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
by Society of Engineering Science, Inc.
- Eringen Medal
- William Prager Medal in Solid Mechanics
- G. I. Taylor Medal in Fluid Mechanics
Footnotes
- ↑ The London Gazette: no. 42341. p. 3161. 28 April 1961.
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