Applied Mechanics

Vector Mechanics for Engineers

(Beer & Johnston)

This book can be used as a reference book for the Applied Mechanics in the second semester of Engineering in Tribhuvan University. It can also be referred for Pokhara University, Kathmandu University and Purbanchal University. All departments (Civil, Computer, Mechanical, Electronics, Electrical, etc. refers to this book for their second semester Applied Mechanics subject.

BACKGROUND 

Ferdinand P. Beer. Born in France and educated in France and Switzerland, Ferd received an M.S. degree from the Sorbonne and an Sc.D. degree in theoretical mechanics from the University of Geneva. He came to the United States after serving in the French army during the early part of World War II and taught for four years at Williams College in the Williams-MIT joint arts and engineering program. Following his service at Williams College, Ferd joined the faculty of Lehigh University where he taught for thirty-seven years. He held several positions, including University Distinguished Professor and chairman of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, and in 1995 Ferd was awarded an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree by Lehigh University. 

E. Russell Johnston, Jr. Born in Philadelphia, Russ holds a B.S. degree in civil engineering from the University of Delaware and an Sc.D. degree in the field of structural engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He taught at Lehigh University and Worcester Polytechnic Institute before joining the faculty of the University of Connecticut where he held the position of chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering and taught for twenty-six years. In 1991 Russ received the Outstanding Civil Engineer Award from the Connecticut Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers. 

As publishers of the books by Ferd Beer and Russ Johnston, we are often asked how they happened to write their books together with one of them at Lehigh and the other at the University of Connecticut. 

The answer to this question is simple. Russ Johnston’s first teaching appointment was in the Department of Civil Engineering and Mechanics at Lehigh University. There he met Ferd Beer, who had joined that department two years earlier and was in charge of the courses in mechanics. 

Ferd was delighted to discover that the young man who had been hired chiefly to teach graduate structural engineering courses was not only willing but eager to help him reorganize the mechanics courses. Both believed that these courses should be taught from a few basic principles and that the various concepts involved would be best understood and remembered by the students if they were presented to them in a graphic way. Together they wrote lecture notes in statics and dynamics, to which they later added problems they felt would appeal to future engineers, and soon they produced the manuscript of the first edition of Mechanics for Engineers that was published in June 1956. 

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