Distinguished Figures in Mechanism and Machine Science ─ Their Contributions and Legacies

This is the second volume of a series of edited books whose aim is to collect contributed papers in a frame that can be a sort of dictionary of personalities in MMS (Mechanism and Machine Science).The papers will illustrate personalities by recognizing persons and their activity, by looking mainly at technical developments in the historical evolution of the fields that today are grouped in MMS. Thus, emphasis will be addressed also to biographical notes to describe efforts and experiences of people who have contributed to the technical achievements whose survey is the core of each contributed paper.It is a unique perspective for technical experts to go further in-depth into the historical background of their topics of expertise. This second volume of the dictionary project has been possible thanks to the invited authors who have enthusiastically shared the initiative and prepared the papers with joint characteristics of survey and historical notes. These papers cover the wide field of the History of Mechanical Engineering with specific focus on MMS. Readers can benefit from the papers in this book and future ones with further satisfaction and motivation for her or his own work (historical or not).

Marco Ceccarelli was born in Rome in 1958. He received his degree in mechanical engineering (cum laude) in 1982 from the University "La Sapienza" of Rome. At the same University he completed a Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics in 1988. In 1987 he was visiting scholar at Stanford University, U.S.A., and in 1990 he received a CNR-NATO annual grant as visiting professor at the Technical University of Valencia, Spain. Since 1990 he has been teaching courses on Mechanics of Machinery and Mechanisms, and Mechanics of Robots at the School of Engineering at the University of Cassino. Since 1996 he is Director of LARM, the Laboratory of Robotics and Mechatronics of DiMSAT, the Department of Mechanics, Structures,Environment and Territory at the University of Cassino. In 2001 he was appointed Full Professor of Mechanics of Machinery and Mechanisms at the University of Cassino. From 2003 to 2005 he was Vice Director of DiMSAT.