Nonmathematicians think of elasticity as a physical property. As a mathematician who s also a specialist in solid mechanics, Spector is a rare bird. His contributions to his field won him SIUC s Outstanding Scholar Award for 2000. The National Science Foundation has supported his research continuously since 1986, and he s also had grants from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research . Spector s colleagues consider him one of the world s top theorists in nonlinear elasticity, a mathematical theory used to study material instability.
Engineers draw on such findings in designing and manufacturing new materials.
Nonlinear elasticity describes the behavior of materials that can bend in more than one way under stress, or that can take different configurations at rest and then return to their original form. Spector demonstrates the latter with the tennis ball half. Modeling such a material requires equations to which there can be more than one answer. Most of Spector s work applies to elastomers elastic polymers, such as silicone rubber. Do the same to, say, a band of plastic and it will stay permanently deformed to some extent.