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ELI STERNBERG
1 91 7-1 988
BY BERNARD BUDIANSKY AND JAMES K. KNOWLES
E~ STEINBERG, the nation s leading elastician, died suddenly
on October 8, 198S, in Pasadena, California, just a few weeks
before his seventy-first birthday. He had served as a member of
the faculty of the California Institute of Technology for over two
decades, becoming professor of mechanics emeritus in June
1988.
Sternberg was born in Vienna, Austria, on November 13,
1917. He completed his high school education at Vienna's
Realgymnasium in 1936 and then enrolled in the Technische
Hochschule of Vienna as a student of architecture. Two years
later, when his studies were abruptly interrupted by the Nazi
invasion of Austria, Sternberg macle his way, alone, to Lonclon,
with the assistance and encouragement of his family. There he
restarted his college studies, this time in engineering, at the Uni-
versity of London. The following year he emigrated to the
United States, continued his education at North Carolina State
College, and receiver! his B.S. in civil engineering in 1941.
Graduate work at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT)
followocI, with a Ph.D. in mechanics conferred in 1945. In the
same year, he became a United States citizen.
Sternberg remained at IIT as a faculty member, becoming a
full professor in 1951. In 1957, following a yearlong visiting
professorship in the Technische Hogeschool of Delft in the
Netherlands as a Fulbright fellow, he joined the Division of
271
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272
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
Applied Mathematics of Brown University as professor of me-
chanics. A sabbatical year in Japan as a Guggenheim fellow
preceded his last academic migration, to the California Institute
of Technology, where he was appointed professor of mechanics
in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science in 1964.
Eli Sternberg's worldwide reputation as a leading scholar and
researcher in the theory of elasticity became well established
within averyfewyears after he started his professional career. His
earliest postdoctoral research contributions, on stress concen-
trations around holes and cavities, carried the stamp of depth,
elegance, authority, rigor, and precision that was to characterize
all his later work. A rich variety of research topics in the theory
of elasticity attracted Sternberg's probing interest during the
ensuing decacles: singular solutions associated with load and
geometry discontinuities; static and dynamic thermoelasticity;
viscoelasticity; thermoviscoelasticit,v; load transfer and load dif-
fusion in fiber-reinforced materials; finite-deformation effects
on stress singularities; and the breakdown of uniqueness in stress
and displacement fields.
A superb mathematical analyst, Sternberg, throughout his
career, not only provided explicit solutions to specific, basic
problems of engineering importance but also contributed in
fundamental ways to the foundations of the subjects with which
he was concerned. Thus, while the early 1952 paper that Stern-
berg wrote (with his student F. Rosenthal) on the stresses ant!
deformations in an elastic sphere under concentrated loads
proviclect, for the first time, the solution to a problem of techno-
logical importance, it also led Sternberg to the incisive, rigorous
formulation of general classes of problems involving load con-
centrations. This work preceded his trenchant study of the
widely quoted but imperfectly understood St. Venant principle
of the theory of elasticity. In a now-classic 1954 paper, Sternberg
gave mathematical form and proof to von Mises' version of this
principle. Conditions for the validity and completeness of math-
ematical representations of general solutions of elasticity theory
were established by Sternberg (together with his student Eu-
banks) in an important 1956 paper; and the analagous questions
for elastodynamics were treated definitively by Sternberg in his
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ELI STERNBERG
273
monumental paper of 1960, "On the Integration of the Equa-
tions of Motion in the Classical Theory of Elasticity." Similarly,
the general theories of thermoelasticity, viscoelasticity, and
nonlinear elasticity are supported at their cores by theorems and
formulations of permanent value that are due to Sternberg and
his collaborators.
Some of these fruitful collaborations are particularly notewor-
thy. For more than a dozen years, Sternbergworkedwith R. Muki
on a variety of topics that included thermal stress problems,
couple-stress effects on singular stress fields, and load transfer in
fiber-reinforced composites. Together with his student M. E.
Gurtin, he explored special and general problems in static and
dynamic elasticity, thermoelasticity, and viscoelasticity over a
period of several years of intense activity. And a nearly quarter-
century-long collaboration with I. K Knowles that started soon
after Sternberg arrived at Caltech was largely devoted to nonlin-
ear singular problems and fundamental questions concerning
loss of ellipticity in finite elasticity.
Eli Sternberg's scientific achievements earned him tremen-
dous respect from the applied mechanics community the world
over. He was greatly admired for the purity of thought, the depth
of perception, and the high level of clarity and conviction that he
achieved in scientific exposition. In addition to membership in
the National Academy of Engineering, overt recognition came
repeatedly, with election to the National Academy of Sciences
and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the conferral
of honorary cloctorates from North Carolina State University
and the Technion of Israel; and the award of the Timoshenko
Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. A
marvelous speaker, he was constantly in demand as a lecturer on
his research, and he held numerous distinguished invited lec-
tureships throughout his career.
Although a recital of Eli's contributions to engineering sci-
ence and of the honors and acclaim bestowed upon him may
suffice to delineate the distinction of his professional career,
there were dimensions of charm, humor, warmth, and worldly
perception in his personality and character that made him a
much-loved colleague who will long be remembered as a won-
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274
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
derful person who enriched the lives of all who knew him. A tall,
imposing, gentlemanly presence, he brought to everyday (lis-
course an elegance of expression en cl happy turn of phrase that
made simply being in his company ajoy. He had a special gift for
recognizing and sharing with his friends and colleagues the
ironies, contradictions, absurdities, and affectations of life in
science and in academia. His bon mats were legendary. Con-
cerning the perennially cleplored academic dictum to "publish
or perish," he pointed out that one method of coping has often
been to "publish perishables." On the same subject, he once
referred to the "statistical validity" of the publication list of an
especially prolific engineering researcher: "He has publishecI so
many papers that there is a statistical chance that some of them
are right." Alluding to the immaculately kept clesk of another
professor: "As soon as some trash accumulates there, he publish-
es it!"
Uncompromisingly serious about the achievement and main-
tenance of high scientific merit in his own work and that of his
students, Eli nevertheless exuded an infectious sense of pleasure
in scientific discovery and in the achievement of unclerstanding.
The heartfelt devotion of Sternberg's students is due as much to
the sympathy and understanding with which he Quilled their
careers as it is to the science he taught them. While Eli undoubt-
ecIly had a clear understancling of the major role he played in
applied mechanics, he was uncomfortable with praise, which he
tended to dismiss, graciously but firmly. "As you know," he said,
in accepting the Timoshenko medal, "medals much like ar-
thritis—are a common symptom of advancing years."
Sternberg is survived by his wife Rae, a Ph.D. in psychology in
private practice; his daughter Eve, a city planner and consultant
in economic development; and his son Peter, a mathematician
on the faculty of Indiana University. He leaves a legacy of
scientific contribution of high and enduring merit, and the
memory of a treasured friend and colleague.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
load transfer
