Paul M. Naghdi

Paul Mansour Naghdi (March 29, 1924 – July 9, 1994) was a professor of mechanical engineering at University of California, Berkeley.

Paul Naghdi was born in Tehran on March 29, 1924. In 1943, in order to pursue his education, he undertook a perilous voyage to the United States, during which he helped navigate the ship. He studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University and graduated in 1946. After a short period in the U.S. Army, he enrolled in the graduate program in the engineering mechanics department of the University of Michigan. He was granted U.S. citizenship in 1948. Also in 1948, he received an M.S. degree. He earned a doctorate in 1951.

During the period 1949 to 1951, he held the position of instructor in engineering mechanics, and upon receipt of the Ph.D., he was appointed assistant professor at Ann Arbor. He was promoted rapidly—to associate professor in 1953 and to full professor the following year. He moved to UC Berkeley in 1958 as professor of engineering science, and played an important role in the establishment of the Division of Applied Mechanics in the Department of Mechanical Engineering here. From 1964 to 1969, he served as chairman of the division. From 1991 onwards, he held the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Chair in Mechanical Engineering, and in 1994 he was advanced to the newly instituted position of professor in the graduate school.

He was an active member of many committees of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). During the period 1967-1972, he served on the executive committee of the Applied Mechanics Division of the ASME, and was chairman of the committee in 1972. For its fiftieth anniversary in 1977, Naghdi undertook the preparation of a history of the division.

From 1972 to 1984, he served on the U.S. National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, and was chairman of the Committee in 1979-1980. During the period 1978-1984, he was a member of the General Assembly of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. His last appointment was to the ASME Committee on Honors (1986–1994), of which he was chairman from 1991 to 1994.

Naghdi's work on continuum mechanics extended over a period of more than forty years and encompassed almost all aspects of the mechanical behavior of solids and fluids. A consummate theoretician, he was most strongly attracted by fundamental questions in mechanics, and always sought to treat these at the highest level of generality. His work is marked by a penetrating physical intuition combined with a methodical and mathematical line of thought. He is best known for his research in the areas of shell theory and plasticity, but is also recognized for his contributions to linear and nonlinear elasticity, viscoelasticity, the theory of deformable rods, the theories of fluid sheets and jets, thermomechanics, mixture theory, and general continuum mechanics.

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