Prof. W. Z. Chien was born on 9 October, 1912 and 1982 saw the 70th anniversary of his birth. Some of his friends, colleagues, and former students prepared this special volume in honour of his outstanding contribution to the field of mechanics. The volume does not contain contributions from all of his students and friends and for this we apologize. Prof. Chien's family have lived. in Qufangquiao Village, Hongshengli, Wuxi County, Jiangsu Province for generations. Many members of his family have been teachers in this village. When he was 14 years old his father died and for a time it appeared necessary to terminate his education but, fortunately, an uncle, Chien Mu, who later became a very famous historian in China, came to his aid and he was able to continue his studies. In 1931 he took entrance exams and was simultaneously admitted to five prestigious Chinese universities. Of these, he chose to enter Tsing-hau University in Beijing, with major work in physics. He received his baccaulaurate in 1935 and taught at middle school for a time until he was awarded a Sino:'British scholarship to study abroad. In the competition for this award, three of the recipients were in the field of mechanics: Prof. C. C. Lin, Prof. Kuo Yung-huai, and Prof. Chien Wei-zang. All three arrived in Toronto in August, 1940 and entered the Depart­ ment of Applied Mathematics of the University of Toronto to study under Prof. J. L. Synge.

Continuum mechanics.- Variational principles for the linear dynamic theory of micropolar viscoelasticity.- An extended version of the transfer theorem.- General mechanics.- On the application of the screw calculus to the mechanics of spatial mechanisms.- Main properties of root-loci of time-delay control systems and a method of finding the stable interval of gain.- Fluid mechanics.- Concerning the singularity of non-linear vibration of ideal liquid in communication tubes with different end cross sections.- Magnetohydrodynamic flow in elliptic ducts.- Flow around a cone at supersonic speed.- Elasticity and plasticity.- A note on biharmonic functions.- The effect of transverse shear deformations on ring-shaped elastic plates.- Generalized variational principles.- Sub-region generalized variational principles in elastic thin plates.- General variational principles for non-conservative problems in theory of elasticity and its application to finite element analysis.- Theory of plates and shells.- Solution in cosine series for the bending of a rectangular cantilever plate under the action of arbitrary transverse loads.- The effect of axisymmetric geometric imperfections on dynamic response to turbulent wind in a cooling tower.- General solution of the bending of ring shells with equations in complex form.- Composite materials.- An analytical solution for interlaminar stresses in symmetric composite laminates.- Finite deformation of plates and shells.- Geometric theory of finite deformation of shells.- Perturbation solutions for uniformly clamped rectangular plates with large deflections.- The large deflection method in the analysis of elastoplastic instability of thin shells with initial imperfections.- Composite expansion method applied to large deflection problems of spherical shells.- Nonlinear bending of circular sandwich plates under the action of axisymmetric uniformly distributed line loads.- Fracture mechanics.- The physical mechanism of acoustic emission and the difficulty of fracture mechanics.- An elastic-plastic analytical analysis near a crack tip.- On path-independent integrals in fracture dynamics for visco-elastic plastic media.- A fundamental solution for flexural problems of a circular cylinder with cracks.- Computational mechanics.- The whiplash effects on tall buildings.- Solutions of geometrical non-linear problems of stiffened plates and shells by the finite element method.- Author Index.