Continuum mechanics through the twentieth century. A concise historical perspective (Q353051)

There are some books on the history of mechanics in the period from the Renaissance until the 19th century, but there is hardly any publication on the progress in the 20th century. This is perhaps little surprising, since a real globalisation took place in science, and also a tremendous diversification of the matter. And a century is a longer period of time than anybody could personally witness. Thus, such an endeavour demands a really broad overview of this subject, which only few people in the world do possess. Surely, G. A. Maugin is one of the few to master this challenge. (And, as a Frenchman, he is also able to also understand and explain in particular the complicated French educational system, what those who are not French could hardly achieve.) So how did Maugin proceed? He starts with a short review of prehistory of continuum mechanics till the end of the 19th century to give the starting point or the state of art at the turn of the century. In particular, he mentions the French, the British, and the German contributions during these classical times. This is obviously justified since the globalisation of continuum mechanics was not that advanced at that time as it is today, where important contributions come from literally all continents. For the rest of the book dealing with the 20th century, Maugin chose a systematic which tries to consider both topics and regions (``schools'') at the same time. This seems to be a good choice, although not an easy one. And it is particularly this interaction between schools/countries and specific fields, which makes this presentation so teasing. As a matter of fact, the scientific community is still split into regions preferring co-operations with some neighbours but not with others, despite of the globalisation. To give an example, in the past, the German-American exchange has always been much better than the German-French one, in contrast to local action principles. This cannot be understood without also considering non-scientific history. Optimistically thinking, these barriers and walls between nations will probably erode due to the Internet and other forms of communication. The development of continuum mechanics in the last century was not continuous at all. Two world wars and a long period of cold war between West and East left their marks in the development of science, which can be shown in many branches. Non-linear (``finite'') continuum mechanics, although a child of the 19th century, had its break through after WWII. The same holds for finite elasticity and plasticity and for non-classical approaches like Cosserat theories. Numerical mechanics came up as a sequitur of the computer age. Also, the interaction between mechanics and mathematics is rather peculiar. While these two fields were still united in the 19th century, the Prandtlisation of mechanics in the first half of the 20th century led to a counteraction of the Truesdellians in its second half. And, of course, the diversification and specialization is continuously growing, same as the number of publications. As a summary, the evolution of science in the past is an extremely interesting matter, and so is Maugins exposition. Sure, the selection of topics and the presentation by the author is highly personal and does not meet any principle of material objectivity, but this is not only unavoidable but also rather interesting. He dedicates special chapters to electromagnetism, to generalized continua, to configurational mechanics, and to relativistic mechanics, but not to, e.g., finite plasticity, or fracture mechanics. The editorial work, however, has to be criticised. The setting of the formulae is in parts poor, and the lack of an index of persons is simply unforgivable for such a book. Perhaps this can be improved in a later edition, which the book really deserves. Nevertheless, we can highly recommend this book to anyone working in the field.