A mechanician is an engineer or a scientist working in the field of
mechanics
Mechanics () is the area of physics concerned with the relationships between force, matter, and motion among Physical object, physical objects. Forces applied to objects may result in Displacement (vector), displacements, which are changes of ...
, or in a related or sub-field: engineering or
computational mechanics,
applied mechanics,
geomechanics,
biomechanics, and
mechanics of materials. Names other than mechanician have been used occasionally, such as mechaniker and mechanicist.
The term mechanician is also used by the
Irish Navy to refer to junior engine room ratings. In the
British Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...
, Chief Mechanicians and Mechanicians 1st Class were
Chief Petty Officers, Mechanicians 2nd and 3rd Class were
Petty Officers, Mechanicians 4th Class were
Leading Ratings, and Mechanicians 5th Class were
Able Ratings.
The rate was only applied to certain technical specialists and no longer exists.
In the
New Zealand Post Office, which provided telephone service prior to the formation of
Telecom New Zealand 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Rotary system exchange, and was superseded by "Technician" circa 1975, perhaps because "Mechanician" was no longer considered appropriate after the first 2000 type Step-byStep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 ( ; ) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. It has an urban population of about It is located in the greater Auckland Region, the area governed by Auckland Council, which includes outlying rural areas and ...
, at
Birkenhead
Birkenhead () is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside, England. The town is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite Liverpool. It lies within the Historic counties of England, historic co ...
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:
motion
In physics, motion is when an object changes its position with respect to a reference point in a given time. Motion is mathematically described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, speed, and frame of reference to an o ...
*
Galileo Galilei
Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei ( , , ) or mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a poly ...
: notion of
strength
*
Robert Hooke:
Hooke's law
*
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed ...
:
Newton's laws,
law of gravitation
*
Guillaume Amontons: laws of
friction
*
Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler ( ; ; ; 15 April 170718 September 1783) was a Swiss polymath who was active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, logician, geographer, and engineer. He founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made influential ...
:
buckling,
rigid body dynamics
*
Jean le Rond d'Alembert:
d'Alembert's principle
D'Alembert's principle, also known as the Lagrange–d'Alembert principle, is a statement of the fundamental classical physics, classical laws of motion. It is named after its discoverer, the French physicist and mathematician Jean le Rond d' ...
,
Wave equation
*
Joseph Louis Lagrange
Joseph-Louis Lagrange (born Giuseppe Luigi Lagrangia[Lagrangian mechanics
In physics, Lagrangian mechanics is a formulation of classical mechanics founded on the d'Alembert principle of virtual work. It was introduced by the Italian-French mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange in his presentation to the ...](_blank)
*
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace (; ; 23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) was a French polymath, a scholar whose work has been instrumental in the fields of physics, astronomy, mathematics, engineering, statistics, and philosophy. He summariz ...
: effects of
surface tension
Surface tension is the tendency of liquid surfaces at rest to shrink into the minimum surface area possible. Surface tension (physics), tension is what allows objects with a higher density than water such as razor blades and insects (e.g. Ge ...
*
Sophie Germain:
elasticity
*
Siméon Denis Poisson:
elasticity
*
Claude-Louis Navier:
elasticity,
fluid mechanics
Fluid mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the mechanics of fluids (liquids, gases, and plasma (physics), plasmas) and the forces on them.
Originally applied to water (hydromechanics), it found applications in a wide range of discipl ...
*
Augustin Louis Cauchy:
elasticity
*
Barré de Saint-Venant:
elasticity
*
William Rowan Hamilton:
Hamiltonian mechanics
In physics, Hamiltonian mechanics is a reformulation of Lagrangian mechanics that emerged in 1833. Introduced by Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Hamiltonian mechanics replaces (generalized) velocities \dot q^i used in Lagrangian mechanics with (gener ...
*
George Gabriel Stokes:
fluid mechanics
Fluid mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the mechanics of fluids (liquids, gases, and plasma (physics), plasmas) and the forces on them.
Originally applied to water (hydromechanics), it found applications in a wide range of discipl ...
*
Gustav Kirchhoff:
theory of plates
*
Josiah Willard Gibbs:
thermodynamics
Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that deals with heat, Work (thermodynamics), work, and temperature, and their relation to energy, entropy, and the physical properties of matter and radiation. The behavior of these quantities is governed b ...
*
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz:
contact mechanics
People who made lasting contributions to mechanics and died during or after the 20th century
*
Ludwig Burmester: theory of linkages
*
Carlo Alberto Castigliano:
Elasticity (physics)
*
Ludwig Prandtl:
Fluid mechanics
Fluid mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the mechanics of fluids (liquids, gases, and plasma (physics), plasmas) and the forces on them.
Originally applied to water (hydromechanics), it found applications in a wide range of discipl ...
,
Plasticity
*
Stephen Timoshenko: author of many lasting textbooks, father of modern applied mechanics
*
Theodore von Karman:
Fluid mechanics
Fluid mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the mechanics of fluids (liquids, gases, and plasma (physics), plasmas) and the forces on them.
Originally applied to water (hydromechanics), it found applications in a wide range of discipl ...
,
Structural instability
*
Richard Edler von Mises:
Plasticity
*
Geoffrey Ingram Taylor:
Fluid mechanics
Fluid mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the mechanics of fluids (liquids, gases, and plasma (physics), plasmas) and the forces on them.
Originally applied to water (hydromechanics), it found applications in a wide range of discipl ...
, theory of
dislocations.
*
Alan Arnold Griffith: founder of
Fracture mechanics
*
George Rankine Irwin: father of modern
Fracture mechanics
*
Warner T. Koiter:
Solid mechanics,
Structural instability
*
John D. Eshelby: inclusion in elastic body
Honors and awards
by European Mechanics Societ
* Euromech Fello
* Solid and Fluid Mechanics Prize
by
Applied Mechanics Division,
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 edu ...
*
Timoshenko Medal
*
Koiter Medal
*
Drucker Medal
*
Thomas K. Caughey Dynamics Award
*
Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Award
*
Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award
by
American Society of Civil Engineers
*
Theodore von Karman Medal, ASCE
by
Society of Engineering Science, Inc.
*
Eringen Medal
*
William Prager Medal in Solid Mechanics
*
G. I. Taylor
Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor Order of Merit, OM Royal Society of London, FRS FRSE (7 March 1886 – 27 June 1975) was a British physicist and mathematician, who made contributions to fluid dynamics and wave theory.
Early life and education
Tayl ...
Medal in Fluid Mechanics
See also
*
Applied mechanics
*
Mechanics
Mechanics () is the area of physics concerned with the relationships between force, matter, and motion among Physical object, physical objects. Forces applied to objects may result in Displacement (vector), displacements, which are changes of ...
*
Geomechanics
*
Biomechanics
*
Structural analysis
Structural analysis is a branch of solid mechanics which uses simplified models for solids like bars, beams and shells for engineering decision making. Its main objective is to determine the effect of loads on physical structures and their c ...
*
Fluid mechanics
Fluid mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the mechanics of fluids (liquids, gases, and plasma (physics), plasmas) and the forces on them.
Originally applied to water (hydromechanics), it found applications in a wide range of discipl ...
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