Dedication

Abstract

Extract Dedicated to the memory of G.I. Barenblatt (1927–2018) and to our loving and supportive wives Iva, Miao, and Rossella G.I. Barenblatt, known to his friends as Grisha, was a giant of mechanics and applied mathematics. Within his life span, he was a rare scientist who made major contributions to both solid and fluid mechanics. In fracture mechanics, he made a transformative advance by inventing the cohesive crack model while a young scientist in Moscow. After the collapse of the USSR he continued a productive career in the West, first as G.I. Taylor professor at the University of Cambridge and then for almost two decades as a professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a foreign member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal Society of London and received many honors.1 2 Born in 1927 in Moscow, USSR, Grigory Isaakovich Barenblatt (in Russian Григóрий Исаáкович Баренблатт) received his Ph.D. from the Lomonosov Moscow State University under the advisorship of A. N. Kolmogorov. Over his remarkable academic career, he contributed to almost all branches of continuum mechanics. He also contributed to the solutions of a number of problems in the theory of polymers, biology, chemistry and geophysics. His results in the fields of fracture mechanics, hydraulic fracturing, filtration of fluid and gas in a porous medium, mechanics of non-classical deformable solids, turbulence, self-similarities, nonlinear waves, and intermediate asymptotics are well known. His research led to a number of well-known monographs and about 250 papers. For his outstanding achievements, he received numerous awards, among them the G.I. Taylor award from the Society for Engineering Science, the Maxwell Prize of the International Committee on Applied and Industrial Mathematics, the Lagrange Prize of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Modesto Panetti Prize and Medal, and the Timoshenko Medal of the ASME. He worked scientifically until his death in Moscow in 2018.