This textbook treats solids and fluids in a balanced manner,using thermodynamic restrictions on the relation between appliedforces and material responses. This unified approach can beappreciated by engineers, physicists, and applied mathematicianswith some background in engineering mechanics. It has many examplesand about 150 exercises for students to practise. The highermathematics needed for a complete understanding is provided in theearly chapters. This subject is essential for engineers involved inexperimental or numerical modelling of material behaviour.
Mary Somerville (1780–1872) would have been a remarkable womanin any age, but as an acknowledged leading mathematician andastronomer at a time when the education of most women was extremelyrestricted, her achievement was extraordinary. Laplace famouslytold her that 'there have been only three women who have understoodme. These are yourself, Mrs Somerville, Caroline Herschel and a MrsGreig of whom I know nothing.' Mary Somerville was in fact MrsGreig. After (as she herself said) translating Laplace's work 'fromalgebra into common language', she wrote On the Connexion of thePhysical Sciences (1834), also reissued in this series. Her nextbook, the two-volume Physical Geography (1848), was a synthesis ofgeography, geology, botany, astronomy and zoology, drawing on themost recent discoveries in all these fields to present an overviewof current understanding of the natural world and the Earth's placein the universe.
