Publisher’s description: The science of rheology remains a mystery to most people, even to some scientists. Some respectable dictionaries have been quite cavalier in their attitude to the science, the small Collins Gem dictionary, for example, being quite happy to inform us that a Rhea is an three-toed South American ostrich, whilst at the same time offering no definition of rheology. This may be due to the fact that the science is interdisciplinary and does not fit well into any one of the historical disciplines. This book contains an in-depth study of the history of rheology, beginning with the statements of Heraclitus, Confucius and the prophetess Deborah. It also emphasizes the distinctive contributions of Newton, Hooke, Boltzmann, Maxwell, Kelvin an others, and culminates in the flourishing activity in the second half of this century.
Contents: 1. Introduction: The ground is prepared; 2. The growing years before 1945; 3. Interlude: Rheology becomes an independent science: Societies, congresses and journals; 4. Constitutive equations; 5. From continuum theory to microstructure (and vice versa); 6. Rheometry beyond viscosity; 7. Some distinctive rheological concepts of phenomena; 8. Computational rheology; Appendices; References; Author index; Subject index.