Mathematics and Mechanics of Solids 24 (2019) 736–747 https://doi.org/10.1177/1081286519825544 The Scientific Work of Bernard D. Coleman Miroslav Šilhavý Institute of Mathematics, CAS Žitná 25 115 67 Prague 1 Czech Republic e-mail:
[email protected] Bernard D. Coleman was an extraordinary figure of the 20th century continuum me- chanics and thermodynamics. He made a number of deep and permanent contribu- tionsthat changed the waythese sciences are nowunderstood, presented, and applied. Many of hisresults are now standard partsof textbooks, monographs and research pa- pers. His initial inspiration came mainly from Clifford Truesdell, and manyofhismost influential papers from the “golden era” of his career were written in collaboration with Walter Noll. Work in continuum mechanics and thermodynamics before their time was typically characterized by the absence of precisely formulated general prin- ciples and a lack mathematical rigor. The present-day clarity and efficiency of these sciences owes much to the efforts of Truesdell, Coleman, Noll and others. In 1963 Coleman was one of the founding members of the Society for Natural Philosophy, which fosters high quality in scientific research in continuum mechanics and thermo- dynamics, and he was a long-standing member of the editorial board of the Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis. His research interests were wide. Apart from general questions of continuum mechanics and thermodynamics (especially thermodynamics of materials with fad- ing memory), they included elasticity, wave propagation, stability, viscoelasticity, nonlocal materials, birefringence, electromagnetism, population dynamics, polymer physics, theory of second sound, physical chemistry, neural networks, and biophysics Acknowledgment This research was supported by RVO 67985840.