A mechanician is an engineer or a scientist working in the field of

mechanics Mechanics (from Ancient Greek: μηχανική, ''mēkhanikḗ'', "of machines") is the area of mathematics and physics concerned with the relationships between force, matter, and motion among physical objects. Forces applied to objects r ...

, or in a related or sub-field: engineering or computational mechanics,

applied mechanics Applied mechanics is the branch of science concerned with the motion of any substance that can be experienced or perceived by humans without the help of instruments. In short, when mechanics concepts surpass being theoretical and are applied and e ...

, geomechanics, biomechanics, and

mechanics of materials The field of strength of materials, also called mechanics of materials, typically refers to various methods of calculating the stresses and strains in structural members, such as beams, columns, and shafts. The methods employed to predict the re ...

. Names other than mechanician have been used occasionally, such as mechaniker and mechanicist. The term mechanician is also used by the

Irish Navy The Naval Service ( ga, An tSeirbhís Chabhlaigh) is the maritime component of the Defence Forces of Ireland and is one of the three branches of the Irish Defence Forces. Its base is in Haulbowline, County Cork. Though preceded by earlier mar ...

to refer to junior engine room ratings. In the British

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

, Chief Mechanicians and Mechanicians 1st Class were

Chief Petty Officer A chief petty officer (CPO) is a senior non-commissioned officer in many navies and coast guards. Canada "Chief petty officer" refers to two ranks in the Royal Canadian Navy. A chief petty officer 2nd class (CPO2) (''premier maître de deuxi� ...

s, Mechanicians 2nd and 3rd Class were Petty Officers, Mechanicians 4th Class were

Leading Rating Leading rating (or leading rate) is the most senior of the junior rates in the Royal Navy. It is equal in status to corporal, as the Royal Navy is the "Senior Service" and oldest service. Leading rates are permitted entry to and full use of cor ...

s, and Mechanicians 5th Class were

Able Rating Able seaman is a military rank used in naval forces. Royal Navy In 1653 the Royal Navy introduced a new pay scale as part of reforms following defeat in the Battle of Dungeness the previous year. Included in these reforms were, for the firs ...

s. The rate was only applied to certain technical specialists and no longer exists. In the

New Zealand Post Office The New Zealand Post Office (NZPO) was a government department of New Zealand until 1987. It was previously (from 1881 to 1959) named the New Zealand Post and Telegraph Department (NZ P&T). As a government department, the New Zealand Post Office ...

, which provided telephone service prior to the formation of

Telecom New Zealand Spark New Zealand Limited is a New Zealand telecommunications company providing fixed-line telephone services, a mobile phone network, internet access services, and (through its Spark Digital division) ICT services to businesses. It was know ...

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 Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...

, at

Birkenhead Birkenhead (; cy, Penbedw) is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside, England; historically, it was part of Cheshire until 1974. The town is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the south bank of the River Mersey, opposite Liver ...

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 Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham, Latinized as Alhazen (; full name ; ), was a medieval mathematician, astronomer, and physicist of the Islamic Golden Age from present-day Iraq.For the description of his main fields, see e.g. ("He is one of the prin ...

motion In physics, motion is the phenomenon in which an object changes its position with respect to time. Motion is mathematically described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, speed and frame of reference to an observer and mea ...

Galileo Galilei Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was ...

: notion of

strength Strength may refer to: Physical strength *Physical strength, as in people or animals *Hysterical strength, extreme strength occurring when people are in life-and-death situations *Superhuman strength, great physical strength far above human ca ...

Robert Hooke Robert Hooke FRS (; 18 July 16353 March 1703) was an English polymath active as a scientist, natural philosopher and architect, who is credited to be one of two scientists to discover microorganisms in 1665 using a compound microscope that ...

Hooke's law In physics, Hooke's law is an empirical law which states that the force () needed to extend or compress a spring (device), spring by some distance () Proportionality (mathematics)#Direct_proportionality, scales linearly with respect to that ...

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a "natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the grea ...

Newton's laws Newton's laws of motion are three basic laws of classical mechanics that describe the relationship between the motion of an object and the forces acting on it. These laws can be paraphrased as follows: # A body remains at rest, or in motion ...

, law of gravitation * Guillaume Amontons: laws of

friction Friction is the force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers, and material elements sliding against each other. There are several types of friction: *Dry friction is a force that opposes the relative lateral motion of t ...

Leonhard Euler Leonhard Euler ( , ; 15 April 170718 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in ma ...

: buckling, rigid body dynamics * Jean le Rond d'Alembert: d'Alembert's principle,

Wave equation The (two-way) wave equation is a second-order linear partial differential equation for the description of waves or standing wave fields — as they occur in classical physics — such as mechanical waves (e.g. water waves, sound waves and s ...

* Joseph Louis Lagrange: Lagrangian mechanics *

Pierre-Simon Laplace Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace (; ; 23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) was a French scholar and polymath whose work was important to the development of engineering, mathematics, statistics, physics, astronomy, and philosophy. He summarized ...

: effects of

surface tension Surface tension is the tendency of liquid surfaces at rest to shrink into the minimum surface area possible. Surface tension is what allows objects with a higher density than water such as razor blades and insects (e.g. water striders) to f ...

* Sophie Germain:

elasticity Elasticity often refers to: *Elasticity (physics), continuum mechanics of bodies that deform reversibly under stress Elasticity may also refer to: Information technology * Elasticity (data store), the flexibility of the data model and the cl ...

* Siméon Denis Poisson:

* Claude-Louis Navier:

fluid mechanics Fluid mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the mechanics of fluids ( liquids, gases, and plasmas) and the forces on them. It has applications in a wide range of disciplines, including mechanical, aerospace, civil, chemical and bio ...

* Augustin Louis Cauchy:

* Barré de Saint-Venant:

William Rowan Hamilton Sir William Rowan Hamilton Doctor of Law, LL.D, Doctor of Civil Law, DCL, Royal Irish Academy, MRIA, Royal Astronomical Society#Fellow, FRAS (3/4 August 1805 – 2 September 1865) was an Irish mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. He was the ...

: Hamiltonian mechanics * George Gabriel Stokes:

* Gustav Kirchhoff: theory of plates *

Josiah Willard Gibbs Josiah Willard Gibbs (; February 11, 1839 – April 28, 1903) was an American scientist who made significant theoretical contributions to physics, chemistry, and mathematics. His work on the applications of thermodynamics was instrumental in t ...

thermodynamics Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that deals with heat, work, and temperature, and their relation to energy, entropy, and the physical properties of matter and radiation. The behavior of these quantities is governed by the four laws of the ...

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz Heinrich Rudolf Hertz ( ; ; 22 February 1857 – 1 January 1894) was a German physicist who first conclusively proved the existence of the electromagnetic waves predicted by James Clerk Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism. The unit o ...

: contact mechanics

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

Ludwig Burmester Ludwig Ernst Hans Burmester (5 May 1840 – 20 April 1927) was a German kinematician and geometer. His doctoral thesis (from German: ''About the elements of a theory of isophotes'') concerned lines on a surface defined by light direction. Afte ...

: theory of linkages *

Carlo Alberto Castigliano Carlo Alberto Castigliano (9 November 1847, in Asti – 25 October 1884, in Milan) was an Italian mathematician and physicist known for Castigliano's method for determining displacements in a linear-elastic system based on the partial deriva ...

Elasticity (physics) In physics and materials science, elasticity is the ability of a body to resist a distorting influence and to return to its original size and shape when that influence or force is removed. Solid objects will deform when adequate loads are ap ...

* Ludwig Prandtl:

Fluid mechanics Fluid mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the mechanics of fluids ( liquids, gases, and plasmas) and the forces on them. It has applications in a wide range of disciplines, including mechanical, aerospace, civil, chemical and bio ...

Plasticity Plasticity may refer to: Science * Plasticity (physics), in engineering and physics, the propensity of a solid material to undergo permanent deformation under load * Neuroplasticity, in neuroscience, how entire brain structures, and the brain it ...

* Stephen Timoshenko: author of many lasting textbooks, father of modern applied mechanics *

Theodore von Karman Theodore may refer to: Places * Theodore, Alabama, United States * Theodore, Australian Capital Territory * Theodore, Queensland, a town in the Shire of Banana, Australia * Theodore, Saskatchewan, Canada * Theodore Reservoir, a lake in Saskatche ...

, Structural instability *

Richard Edler von Mises Richard Edler von Mises (; 19 April 1883 – 14 July 1953) was an Austrian scientist and mathematician who worked on solid mechanics, fluid mechanics, aerodynamics, aeronautics, statistics and probability theory. He held the position of Gordon ...

* Geoffrey Ingram Taylor:

, theory of dislocations. * Alan Arnold Griffith: founder of

Fracture mechanics Fracture mechanics is the field of mechanics concerned with the study of the propagation of cracks in materials. It uses methods of analytical solid mechanics to calculate the driving force on a crack and those of experimental solid mechanics t ...

* George Rankine Irwin: father of modern

Warner T. Koiter Warner Tjardus Koiter (Amsterdam, June 16, 1914 – Delft, September 2, 1997) was an influential mechanical engineer and the Professor of Applied Mechanics at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands from 1949 to 1979. Life and educa ...

: Solid mechanics, Structural instability *

John D. Eshelby John Douglas Eshelby FRS (21 December 1916 – 10 December 1981) was a scientist in micromechanics. His work has shaped the fields of defect mechanics and micromechanics of inhomogeneous solids for fifty years and provided the basis for the q ...

: inclusion in elastic body

Honors and awards

by European Mechanics Societ

* Euromech Fello

* Solid and Fluid Mechanics Prize

by

Applied Mechanics Division The Applied Mechanics Division (AMD) is a division in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The AMD was founded in 1927, with Stephen Timoshenko being the first chair. The current AMD membership is over 5000, out of about 90,000 me ...

American Society of Mechanical Engineers The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) is an American professional association that, in its own words, "promotes the art, science, and practice of multidisciplinary engineering and allied sciences around the globe" via "continuing ...

Timoshenko Medal The Timoshenko Medal is an award given annually by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) to an individual "in recognition of distinguished contributions to the field of applied mechanics." The Timoshenko Medal, widely regarded as th ...

* Koiter Medal *

Drucker Medal The Daniel C. Drucker medal was instituted in 1997 by the Applied Mechanics Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The Drucker Medal is conferred in recognition of distinguished contributions to the fields of applied mechanics a ...

Thomas K. Caughey Dynamics Award The Thomas K. Caughey Dynamics Award is an award given annually by the Applied Mechanics Division, of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), "in recognition of an individual who has made significant contributions to the field of nonlinear ...

Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Award The Applied Mechanics Award is an award given annually by the Applied Mechanics Division of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) "to an outstanding individual for significant contributions in the practice of engineering mechanics; contri ...

Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award The Special Achievement Award for Young Investigators in Applied Mechanics is an award given annually by the Applied Mechanics Division, of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The Award is presented at the Applied Mechanics Annual Din ...

American Society of Civil Engineers American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

Theodore von Karman Medal The Theodore von Karman Medal in Engineering Mechanics is awarded annually to an individual in recognition of his distinguished achievement in engineering mechanics, applicable to any branch of civil engineering. This award was established and endo ...

, ASCE by

Society of Engineering Science, Inc. A society is a Social group, group of individuals involved in persistent Social relation, social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same Politics, political authority an ...

* Eringen Medal *

William Prager Medal The William Prager Medal is an award given annually by the Society of Engineering Science (SES) to an individual for "outstanding research contributions in either theoretical or experimental Solid Mechanics or both". This medal was established in ...

in Solid Mechanics *

G. I. Taylor Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor OM FRS FRSE (7 March 1886 – 27 June 1975) was a British physicist and mathematician, and a major figure in fluid dynamics and wave theory. His biographer and one-time student, George Batchelor, described him as ...

Medal in Fluid Mechanics

Footnotes

{{Reflist

External links

iMechanica
news and views of interest to mechanicians and their friends.
Homepage of the ASME International Applied Mechanics DivisionMathematics Genealogy ProjectThe MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
Mechanics

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

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

Honors and awards

Footnotes

See also

External links