University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Grainger College of Engineering

Lambert Ben Freund

[title]
To Lambert Ben Freund for his outstanding and fundamental contributions to the mechanics of materials.

Henry Ledyard Goddard University Professor, Division of Engineering, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

  • BS, Engineering Mechanics, 1964, University of Illinois
  • MS, Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, 1965, University of Illinois
  • PhD, Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, 1967, Northwestern University

Ben Freund joined the staff at Brown University as a postdoctoral fellow in 1967, and he rose through the ranks to become professor of engineering in 1975. He has become known both as an outstanding teacher and a pioneering researcher. His work, which has contributed significantly to our basic understanding of the mechanical behavior of engineering materials, has resulted in two books and many journal articles. His recent book on dynamic fracture mechanics is already being hailed as a classic: it treats a subject to which he has made major contributions and which is important to many branches of engineering. Currently, he is engaged in mechanics research on stress-driven physical processes in electronic materials.

Freund has lectured widely in the United States and abroad on the applications of mechanics to materials engineering problems. In 1990, he was awarded the Technical Analysis Corporations President’s Award, which is a Tau Beta Pi teaching award, from Brown University. He has held visiting professorships at Stanford University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Berkeley.

His research accomplishments have been recognized by the Henry Hess Award of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the George R. Irwin Medal of the American Society for Testing and Materials. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and American Academy of Mechanics. In 1994, a symposium on dynamic failure in modern materials was held in his honor at the California Institute of Technology.

Freund has frequently served the engineering community through professional activities, including as editor of the Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, Cambridge Monographs on Mechanics, and Journal of Applied Mechanics, and as professional consultant. He has established a leadership position in determining directions of future research through activities within professional organizations, including as chair of the Applied Mechanics Division of ASME, member of the U.S. National Committee for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, and U.S. delegate to the International Union for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics.

Current as of 1996.