was a professor of engineering. He was born in Ono, a small port village of

Kanazawa is the capital of Ishikawa Prefecture in central Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 466,029 in 203,271 households, and a population density of 990 persons per km2. The total area of the city was . Etymology The name "Kanazaw ...

Japan, on December 7, 1925. He received a doctorate in the Department of Applied Mathematics of the

University of Tokyo The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...

in 1954. He taught at

Meiji University is a Private university, private research university in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. Originally founded as Meiji Law School () by three lawyers in 1881, it became a university in April 1920. As of May 2023, Meiji has 32,261 undergradu ...

, Japan from 1954 to 1958. In 1958, he went to the United States to work in the Department of Materials Science at

Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...

Evanston, Illinois Evanston is a city in Cook County, Illinois, United States, situated on the North Shore (Chicago), North Shore along Lake Michigan. A suburb of Chicago, Evanston is north of Chicago Loop, downtown Chicago, bordered by Chicago to the south, Skok ...

. He became a professor in the Department of

Civil Engineering Civil engineering is a regulation and licensure in engineering, professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads ...

in 1966 before his retirement in 1996, and also held an appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Mura was appointed Walter P. Murphy Professor in the

McCormick School of Engineering The McCormick School of Engineering (branded as Northwestern Engineering) is the engineering school of Northwestern University, a private university in Evanston, Illinois. History The trustees of Northwestern University founded a College of T ...

at Northwestern, was elected as a member of the

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

(NAE) in 1986 for his contributions to the field of

micromechanics Micromechanics (or, more precisely, micromechanics of materials) is the analysis of heterogeneous materials including of composite, and anisotropic and orthotropic materials on the level of the individual constituents that constitute them and th ...

, and received many other accolades for his work. He was as much recognized for his academic achievement as his generosity in opening his home to visiting scholars and graduate students from Japan, where weekend gatherings were a regular occurrence. Dr. Mura was interested in the micromechanics of solids. Examples of

are theories on fracture and fatigue of materials, mathematical analysis for dislocations and inclusions in solids, mechanical characterization of thin films, ceramics and composite materials. Professor Mura was also interested in the inverse problems. His research aimed to predict inelastic damages in solids by knowing surface displacements on the surface of the solids, including prediction of earthquake by knowing the earth surface. The inverse problems play an important role in qualitative nondestructive evaluation of materials. Most of Professor Mura's research was mathematically oriented but cooperative with experiments in mechanics and materials science. Professor Mura died of heart related complications on August 9, 2009, at the age of 83.

Selected publications

*Mura, T. 1969. Mathematical Theory of Dislocations. Proceedings of ASME Symposium, Northwestern University. *Mura, T. 1981. Mechanics of Fatigue. AMD-Vol. 47. Proceedings of ASME Symposium. *Mura, T. 1987. Micromechanics of Defects in Solids (2nd ed.). The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff

*Mura, T., and T. Koya. 1992. Variational methods in mechanics. Oxford University Press. {{DEFAULTSORT:Mura, Toshio 1925 births People from Kanazawa, Ishikawa Japanese emigrants to the United States Northwestern University faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering 2009 deaths