James Robert Rice (born December 3, 1940) is an American

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considerin ...

scientist A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosop ...

geophysicist Geophysics () is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and physical properties of the Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. The term ''geophysics'' som ...

,''Who's who in Frontier Science and Technology.'' Vol. 1. 1984. p 608 and Mallinckrodt Professor of Engineering Sciences and Geophysics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, . Rice is known as a

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 mecha ...

, who has made fundamental contributions to various aspects of

solid mechanics Solid mechanics, also known as mechanics of solids, is the branch of continuum mechanics that studies the behavior of solid materials, especially their motion and deformation under the action of forces, temperature changes, phase changes, and ...

. Two of his early contributions are the concept of the

J-integral The J-integral represents a way to calculate the strain energy release rate, or work ( energy) per unit fracture surface area, in a material. The theoretical concept of J-integral was developed in 1967 by G. P. Cherepanov and independently in 1968 ...

in fracture mechanics and an explanation of how

plastic Plastics are a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic materials that use polymers as a main ingredient. Their plasticity makes it possible for plastics to be moulded, extruded or pressed into solid objects of various shapes. This adapta ...

deformations localize in a narrow band. In recent years, Rice has focused on the mechanical processes involved in earthquakes.

Biography

Youth and early career

Rice was born in 1940 in

Frederick, Maryland Frederick is a city in and the county seat of Frederick County, Maryland. It is part of the Baltimore–Washington Metropolitan Area. Frederick has long been an important crossroads, located at the intersection of a major north–south Native ...

, son of Donald Blessing Rice and Mary Celia (Santangelo) Rice. He received his B.S. in Engineering Mechanics from

Lehigh University Lehigh University (LU) is a private research university in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania. The university was established in 1865 by businessman Asa Packer and was originally affiliated with the Epi ...

in 1962. He went on to receive his M.S. and Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics from Lehigh in 1963 and 1964, respectively. Rice taught at

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

from 1964 until 1981, when he accepted a position at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

. By the time he started to publish his first major, high-cited, publications in 1967–68, he was Assistant Professor of Engineering at Brown University. A seminal contribution was the below-listed paper in Philosophical Magazine with Robb Thomson of the National Bureau of Standards (now

NIST The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...

) on the critical conditions for the emission of dislocations from crack tips, and thus the criterion for blunting versus propagation of a brittle crack.

Further career and recognition

Since 1981 Rice teaches at

. Since 2001, he has served as the Mallinckrodt Professor of Engineering Sciences and Geophysics in the

Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences The Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) is the engineering school within Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, offering degrees in engineering and applied sciences to graduate students admitte ...

. In 1994, he received the

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 the ...

"for seminal contributions to the understanding of plasticity and fracture of engineering materials and applications in the development in the computational and experimental methods of broad significance in mechanical engineering practice". He was also awarded The Franklin Institute's Francis J. Clamer Medal in 1996. In 2008, he was awarded the Panetti-Ferrari International Prize for Applied Mechanics. In 2016 the

ASME 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 ...

awarded him the

ASME Medal The ASME Medal, created in 1920, is the highest award bestowed by the ASME (founded as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers) Board of Governors for "eminently distinguished engineering achievement". The award has been presented every year ...

. In 2021 he received the

Harvey Prize Harvey Prize is an annual Israeli award for breakthroughs in science and technology, as well as contributions to peace in the Middle East granted by the Technion in Haifa. History The prize is named for industrialist and inventor Leo Harvey. T ...

of the Technion in Israel. Rice was elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

in 1980 for providing a sound and practical basis for the needed rapid development of inelastic fracture mechanics. He was also elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1981. In March 1996 he was elected as a Foreign member of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

.Foreign member of the Royal Society
/ref> In 2015, the Society of Engineering Science established the James R. Rice Medal to honor Rice's contributions to the engineering sciences.

Selected publications

* Rice, James R.
A path independent integral and the approximate analysis of strain concentration by notches and cracks
'' Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Contract SD-86, Material Research Program, May 1967. * Rice, James R.
Mathematical analysis in the mechanics of fracture
" ''Fracture: an advanced treatise'' 2 (1968): 191–311. * Rice, James R.
Inelastic constitutive relations for solids: an internal-variable theory and its application to metal plasticity
" ''Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids'' 19.6 (1971): 433–455. * * Rice, James R., and Michael P. Cleary. " tp://131.215.65.7/pub/avouac/Ge277-2012/readings/Rice_RGS1976.pdf Some basic stress diffusion solutions for fluid‐saturated elastic porous media with compressible constituents" ''Reviews of Geophysics'' 14.2 (1976): 227–241. * Rice, James R.
The localization of plastic deformation
" (1976): 207.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rice, James R 1940 births Living people 21st-century American engineers Lehigh University alumni Brown University faculty Harvard University faculty People from Frederick, Maryland Foreign Members of the Royal Society Members of the French Academy of Sciences Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering ASME Medal recipients