Historical Links to People in Mechanics
Cauchy: A very short description
of Cauchy's achievements in mechanics and a picture of him. A more
complete description of his life and his contributions to mathematics.
Lagrange: A
short biography of Lagrange and a description of his contribution to
mechanics and mathematics.
Euler: A
short biography of Euler and a description of his contribution to mechanics
and mathematics.
The Bernoulli Family: The Bernoulli
family produced some of the greatest mathematicians of their time and
contributed greatly to the then body of knowledge in mechanics.
A
short biography of Jacob Bernoulli . He made some the first computations
on the deflections of beams; albeit incorrect since he assumed the lower
chord as the point of rotation of the cross-section (instead of the neutral
axis).
A
short biography of Johann Bernoulli . He in many ways is the father
of the principle of virtual displacements.
A
short biography of Daniel Bernoulli . He worked extensively on strength
of materials and was the person that got Euler interested in looking at
the problem of the deflection of beam by posing it as a variational problem.
Hooke: A
short biography of Hooke and a description of his contribution to mechanics
and mathematics.
Zaremba: A
short biography of Zaremba and a description of his contribution to
mechanics and mathematics.
Airy: A
short biography of Airy and a description of his contribution to mechanics
and mathematics. A bit more
on
Airy.
Saint-Venant: A
very short biography of Saint-Venant and a description of his contribution
to mechanics and mathematics.
Fourier: A
short biography of Fourier and a description of his contribution to
mathematics. He did not work directly on mechanics.