Essays in the History of Mechanics

New York: Springer-Verlag, 1968. Presumed First Edition, First printing thus. Hardcover. [12], 384 pages. Contains 126 Figures. Includes Index of Names and Index of Subjects. Chapters include The Mechanics of Leonardo da Vinci; A Program toward Rediscovering the Rational Mechanics of the Age of Reason; Reactions of Late Baroque Mechanics to Success, Conjecture, Error, and Failure in Newton's Principia; The Creation and Unfolding of the Concept of Stress; Whence the Law of Moment of Momentum?; Early Kinetic Theories of Gases; Reactions of the History of Mechanics upon Modern Research; and Recent Advances in Rational Mechanics (1956). Inscribed by Steve Whitaker, U.C.D. on the front free endpaper. Inscription reads: Alec, When the path ahead becomes unclear, take some time to study the masters. They may not have your answers, but they had your questions. Steve Whitaker, U.C.D, 1981. Chemical engineering emeritus professor Stephen Whitaker was intrigued by the principle of ‘lost work,’ in fluid mechanics a scenario in which “everyone knows what it is, but nobody knows how to prove it,” said Whitaker. Whitaker joined the Experimental Research Laboratory at DuPont. Whitaker came to UC Davis in 1964 just as the College of Engineering was being formed. A pioneer in the development of volume averaging theories for flow and transport in porous media, Whitaker wrote a seminal textbook called “The Method of Volume Averaging,” that was published in 1999 and is still used widely today. Whitaker based the textbook on his lectures for UC Davis chemical engineering graduate students, who he taught from 1976 to 2001. He retired in 2003. Clifford Ambrose Truesdell III (February 18, 1919 – January 14, 2000) was an American mathematician, natural philosopher, and historian of science. In 1943, he completed a Ph.D. in mathematics at Princeton University. For the rest of the decade, the U.S. Navy employed him to do mechanics research. Truesdell taught at Indiana University 1950–61, where his students included James Serrin, Jerald Ericksen, and Walter Noll. From 1961 until his retirement in 1989, Truesdell was professor of rational mechanics at Johns Hopkins University. He and Noll contributed to foundational rational mechanics, whose aim is to construct a mathematical model for treating (continuous) mechanical phenomena. Truesdell was the founder and editor-in-chief of the journals Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis and Archive for History of Exact Sciences, which were unusual in several ways. Following Truesdell's criticisms of awkward style in scientific writing, the journal accepted papers in English, French, German, and Latin. In addition to his original work in mechanics, Truesdell was a major historian of science and mathematics, editing or co-editing six volumes of the collected works of Leonhard Euler. Truesdell wrote: This volume collects my shorter articles on the history of mechanics, some already published in various places, some revised from earlier papers, and some never published before. All of them began as lectures, and here they are printed as such, little changed from the last times I read them out to an audience. While the several articles concern different aspects of mechanics, overlap and even some repetition could not be avoided, since mechanics is one great science, and the same original oftentimes served more than one end in its growth. My three major historical treatises, which were published in Volumes (II) 11 , 2 12, and 13 of L. Euleri Opera Omnia, are not included. To simplify the printing I have also mostly omitted detailed reference to sources discussed more fully in those treatises, but of course I have added to the texts of the lectures citations of other sources, some notes in answer to questions a reader might ask, and bibliographical notes at the end of each. Condition: Very good / Fair (DJ has wear, tears, soiling and chips).

Keywords: History of Mechanics, Steve Whitaker, Leonardo da Vinci, Rational Mechanics, Newton's Principia, Law of Moment, Moment of Momentum, Kinetic Theories, Theories of Gases

[Book #81882]

Price: $650.00

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