SIAM is excited to announce that through the joint fundraising efforts of students, friends, colleagues, and the family of Dr. Jerald L. Ericksen, the Jerald L. Ericksen Prize has been established. The prize is named in memory of Dr. Ericksen, an American mathematician specializing in continuum mechanics, who passed away on June 11, 2021. SIAM is particularly moved by the creation of this prize, as the funding was fully crowdsourced by members of the community. A group of SIAM members saw a need and came together to raise the money, and gifts of every size contributed to the formation of this prize. SIAM looks forward to celebrating the important work of our community through this prize for many years to come.
The prize of $2,000 will be awarded every five years to any member or members of the scientific community for the original formulation of a mathematical theory of a significant scientific or engineering problem in the fifteen years preceding the award date. The prize will first be awarded at the 2025 SIAM Annual Meeting.
Dr. Ericksen was born on December 20, 1924, in Portland, Oregon, to Adolph and Ethel Ericksen. He graduated from high school in the fall of 1942 and entered Oregon State College in Corvallis. He enlisted in the Navy after a year at Oregon State and met his wife, Marion Pook, during training. After earning a Ph.D. in mathematics at Indiana University in 1951, Dr. Ericksen joined the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, where he pursued various topics of interest. In 1957, he joined the mechanical engineering department at Johns Hopkins University. In the early 1980s, he moved to the department of aerospace engineering and mechanics (AEM) at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, with a joint appointment in the School of Mathematics. While with AEM, he joined three other members of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), one of the highest professional honors an engineer can receive, after being elected by peers.
Dr. Ericksen retired at 65 and was a Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Ericksen was a central figure in the resurgence of interest in continuum mechanics from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. He is well known for formulating the dynamic theory of liquid crystals alongside Frank Leslie; for his discovery of the universal deformations of elastic materials known as the “Ericksen’s problem”; and for studies that elucidated the unusual behavior of non-Newtonian fluids. In addition to membership in the NAE, Dr. Ericksen was honored for his contributions by receiving the Bingham medal from the Society of Rheology (1968), the Timoshenko Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1979), and the Engineering Science Medal from the Society of Engineering Science (1987), and several honorary doctorates. [Learn more about Dr. Ericksen’s life.]
Thank you to Dr. Ericksen’s children and the SIAM community for their joint efforts in making this prize possible!
Visit the Jerald L. Ericksen Prize page for eligibility requirements and to learn more about the prize.