Dr. Raymond Mindlin: 

Modest Man Honored by Presidents

It’s not everyone who earns a national award presented by a president of the United States, but Dr. Raymond Mindlin did that and more: He received two awards from two different presidents. 

While his honors came in realms few know about and even fewer understand, the results of his work are everywhere. For instance, the electronic watch on your wrist keeps accurate time because of its high-frequency, quartz crystal oscillator whose operation is based on equations that Mindlin “cooked up” around 1951.

A mathematical theorist and researcher, he was considered a world leader in his field, which he described succinctly in a 1980 interview: “I devise mathematical equations to describe and explain mechanical and electro-mechanical phenomena.”

His work over five decades helped the Allies win World War II, and led to the development of core components in not just electronic watches, but also televisions, radios and cell phones. His work even helped devise packaging materials with the best cushioning abilities.

Raymond David Mindlin was born in New York City in 1906 and earned two bachelor’s degrees and a doctorate at Columbia University, where he taught in the engineering school from 1932 until his retirement in 1975.

During World War II, he left Columbia for three years  to work on naval ordnance at the government’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Silver Spring, Md. There he contributed significantly to the development of the radio proximity fuze, which causes a shell or missile to explode when it is near the target instead of having to hit the target directly, greatly increasing its effectiveness.  The fuze has been called one of the most important technological innovations of World War II, and for his work on it, President Harry S Truman awarded Mindlin the Presidential Medal of Merit in 1946.

Over the years Mindlin researched and taught in such esoteric areas as photoelasticity, fictional contact and granular media,  waves and vibrations in isotropic and anisotropic plates,  wave propagation in rods and cylinders, and crystal lattice theories.

At his retirement in 1975, some 200 people attended a Columbia testimonial dinner at which Professor Jewell M. Garrelts, former associate dean of the Columbia engineering school, called Mindlin “an outstanding scientist whose clear, concise lectures were those of a master.” Garrelts noted that Mindlin was recognized internationally as “a pioneer in extending the mathematical theory of elasticity to bordering areas of electrical, thermal, optical, and acoustical phenomena.” Among the attendees was Mindlin’s first doctoral student, a man who went on to become head of the school of engineering at the University of Illinois. 

Just before his retirement, a book documented his accomplishments.  R.D. Mindlin and Applied Mechanics, published by Pergamon, consists of eight chapters written by eight of his former students describing his major contributions to science.

Over the years he received countless awards, including, in 1980, the National Medal of Science, presented by President Jimmy Carter. The most lasting honor came after his death: The Raymond D. Mindlin Medal is today awarded by the American Society of Civil Engineers for outstanding research contributions in applied solid mechanics.

Dr. Mindlin lived on Deer Hill Drive from 1973 until 1983 when he moved to New Hampshire. He died there in 1987 at the age of 81.

In the 1980 interview with The Ridgefield Press, Mindlin joked about the estimated    100 million electronic quartz crystals that were then being manufactured each year based on his formulas. “Unfortunately, I don’t get any money for it — you can’t patent a mathematical equation,” he said. “If I had a tenth of a cent for each one, I could support the school system of Ridgefield.”

But neither money nor notoriety motivated Mindlin’s research. “I do it for the fun of it,” he told the Press interviewer.

Ray Mindlin was also well-liked. “His professional colleagues treated him with deference at times bordering on awe,” said a fellow professor at the time of his death. “He was secure in the knowledge of his own worth, but wore the mantle of his eminence with genuine modesty. He was generous in giving or sharing credit, and unfailingly courteous to peers seeking his opinion or advice. 

“Basically a shy, reserved person, he was, invariably and unexceptionally, the consummate gentleman.”

 

Fabian Franklin: 

A Three-Career Conversationalist

Fabian Franklin, a man with a name that sounds like an actor’s, had three very different careers, none of them on the stage.

Born in 1853 in Hungary, Franklin came to this country in 1857. When he was only 11 years old, he won a scholarship to Columbian College, now George Washington University. After graduating in 1869, Dr. Franklin became a civil engineer and surveyor for a railroad and later worked for a city. 

However, mathematics was his passion and, in 1877, he switched careers and joined the mathematics department at Johns Hopkins University, teaching, studying and researching until 1895. He earned a doctorate in math there in 1880 and published many papers on mathematical concepts.

It was at Johns Hopkins that Franklin met a unique math student. Christine Ladd, who’d studied at Vassar, had applied for admission to the all-male university under the name, C. Ladd. She was admitted, but when university leaders discovered her sex, they at first limited the courses she could take, but eventually wound up giving her a $500 a year fellowship. She and Franklin, who was five years younger than she, became friends and were married in 1882. Christine Ladd-Franklin went on to become a pioneering woman psychologist and logician who developed the Ladd-Franklin theory of the evolution of color vision.  

In 1895, Professor Franklin, who enjoyed writing and admired journalism, switched careers again and became editor of The Baltimore News. After a few years there, he was hired as an editor at The New York Evening Post, retiring in 1917. 

He continued to write, producing many articles for periodicals as well as several books, including one on economics and another on Prohibition (which he opposed). 

“He was born a journalist by virtue of his passionate interest in the play of contemporary life,” said The New York Times at his death in 1939, adding,  “Dr. Franklin was beyond question one of the great conversationalists of our day and worthy to be compared with the giants of the art.”  

His wife died in 1930 and about a year later, Dr. Franklin and his daughter, Margaret, bought a home on Barry Avenue. “He was a familiar and striking figure on the streets,  his heavy white beard giving him a distinguished appearance,” The Press said in 1939.  

At his funeral, the Rev. William B. Lusk, rector of St. Stephen’s, observed, “In the seven years of his residence in Ridgefield, he was continually communicating something of his beautiful spirit of friendliness, kindliness, gentleness, modesty, courtesy, and good will…”  

When Lewis J. Finch subdivided the Fabian property in the 1960s, he called the small development “Franklin Heights.”