J D Eshelby and his amusements

I have tried to read the papers of Eshelby, enjoyed the efforts immensely (thanks to my wonderful thesis advisor), and have been amazed and inspired by his works. Here are some of my earlier write-ups on Eshelby.

One of my write-ups contains a factual error — the total number of publications of Eshelby is 56 and not 20 as I wrote; it should be rather easy to make the complete works of J D Eshelby for yourself with a bit of effort. This process is further assisted by the Biographical memoir of Eshelby by BA Bilby, which lists all the 56 papers. If you hurry, you might be able to download a copy of the paper for your records from the Royal Society archive. As a bonus, you get a signed photograph of Eshelby with the memoir

The memoir is a pleasure to read; apparently, Eshelby taught himself theory of elasticity for his thesis on ‘Stationary and moving dislocations’; was well versed in Sanskrit (among other classical languages); was not keen on doing experimental work; was an avid second-hand book buyer; though not active in politics, was typically anti-establishment; was clear and amusing as a lecturer, and prepared his lectures with great care. The more I learn about him, the more I like him.

I can do no better than to end this post by quoting the last few sentences of the memoir:

Eshelby liked to regard some of his important works as ‘Amusing applications of the theorem of Gauss’. Yet his scholarship was always devoted to useful ends and has had a major influence on many areas of science and technology.

It is alarming to realise how difficult for someone now to follow in his way.