Engineering Memory of the Month

A toast to engineering mechanics

Known widely as the "father of engineering mechanics," Stephan P. Timoshenko presides at the head of the table over a tea party of his research group in August 1955. Timoshenko was something of a superstar when he joined the Stanford faculty in 1936. He continued to teach well into the 1950s and helped launch a mechanical engineering division that is still vibrant today.

Engineering mechanics began under the administration of Professor Lydik Jacobsen as a division of the ME department in 1948-1949, recalls Mel Zaid, the division's first graduate (MS 1949). With a specialty in theoretical fluid dynamics and nonlinear dynamics, the division later (and briefly) became a separate department with the name Applied Mechanics, before rejoining the ME department. A few years ago, says engineering mechanics PhD holder and Professor Emeritus Charles Steele, the division again took a new name: "Mechanics and Computation." Professor Peter Pinsky is its current chair.

If you'd like to share your nostalgic photos and stories with the Stanford Engineering community, e-mail them to David Orenstein, manager, Communications and P.R.