Associazione Edoardo Benvenuto

From the Preface
The history of mechanics, and more particularly, the history of mechanics applied to constructions, constitutes a field of research that is relatively recent. Be that as it may, it has attracted illustrious scholars, beginning in the nineteenth century with Saint-Venant, Todhunter and Pearson and continuing in the twentieth century with Duhem, Mach, Dugas, Timoshenko, Truesdell, Heyman, Szabó, Charlton, Benvenuto and Di Pasquale, to name only the greatest. In the last twenty years, the works of these authors has led new generations of scholars to delve into themes of research that involve diverse disciplines - from mathematics to construction, from architecture to geometry, from the strength of materials to the mechanics of solids and structures - leading to the formulation of the research project Between Mechanics and Architecture, begun by Edoardo Benvenuto and Patricia Radelet de Grave on the occasion of the XIXth International Congress of History of Science (Saragozza 1993) and continuing with symposiums in Genoa (1996), Liège and Louvain-la-Neuve (1997) and Pescara (1998).
After the deaths of Edoardo Benvenuto (1940-1998) and Clifford Truesdell (1919-2000), the Associazione Edoardo Benvenuto decided to dedicate an international symposium to their contributions to the field of the history of mechanics. The close ties between the two scholars, born on the occasion of the publication of the book by Edoardo Benvenuto, An Introduction to the History of Structural Mechanics (New York: Springer, 1991), induced the Associazione to organize the meeting during which the papers in this present volume were presented.