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

Charles E. Taylor

[title]
To Dr. Charles E. Taylor, researcher, educator, and engineer, for his original contributions in the areas of experimental stress analysis and for his active leadership in major professional societies.

Retired Professor of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, and Professor of Engineering Science, University of Florida, Gainesville Florida

  • PhD, Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, 1953

Charles E. Taylor, an internationally recognized authority on optical stress analysis technique, has been honored four times by the Society for Experimental Mechanics for his innovative research in photomechanics. As a long-time member of the faculty in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at UIUC, Professor Taylor supervised many doctoral students. In the 1960s he introduced coherent optics to photoelasticity. He also explored dynamic photoelasticity using a ruby laser, which provided a very intense polarized monochromatic light source.

A representative of the Society for Experimental Mechanics to the National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, he served as president of that society and of the Society of Engineering Science. He was awarded the M. M. Frocht Award from the Society of Experimental Mechanics. In 1970 and 1973 he received the Hetenyi award for outstanding technical paper of the year; in 1974 he gave the prestigious William Murray lecture at the annual meeting of the Society of Engineering Mechanics.

A member of the National Academy of Engineering, he is also a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Society of Experimental Mechanics, the American Academy of Mechanics, the American Association for the advancement of Science, and the Society of Engineering Science. He now teaches at the University of Florida at Gainesville.

Current as of 1987.