James Rice wins 2008 Panetti-Ferrari prize

Contact:
Michael Patrick Rutter
(617) 496-3185

The Academy of Sciences of Turin has awarded James R. Rice, Mallinckrodt Professor of Engineering Sciences and Geophysics in Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, the 2008 Panetti-Ferrari International Prize for Applied Mechanics.

The Academy was established in 1758 by Joseph Louis Lagrange, the Italian-born mathematician and astronomer known for his achievements in mechanics, calculus, and number theory. The prize is supported by successive endowments from the late Professors Modesto Panetti and Carlo Ferrari, 20th century leaders in Italian mechanics and aeronautics. First awarded as the Panetti Prize to Geoffry I. Taylor of Cambridge UK in 1958, an award is made every 2-3 years and currently includes a €15,000 premium.

Rice addresses the mechanics and physics of earth and environmental processes. That involves theoretical solid and fluid mechanics studies of stressing, deformation, fracture and flow problems as they arise in seismology, tectonophysics and surficial geologic processes, and in geomechanical and hydrological aspects of civil and environmental engineering.

He received his B.S. in Engineering Mechanics from Lehigh University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics, also from Lehigh University.