Henri Tresca

Vocation

Notable

French mechanical engineer, and a professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris. He is the father of the field of plasticity, or non-recoverable deformations, which he explored in an extensive series of experiments begun in 1864. He is the discoverer of the Tresca (or maximal shear stress) criterion of material failure. Tresca's criterion is one of two main failure criteria used today for ductile materials. The second important criterion is due to von Mises. Tresca's stature as an engineer was such that Gustave Eiffel put his name on number 3 in his list of 72 people making the Eiffel tower in Paris possible. Tresca was also among the designers of the prototype meter bar that served as the first standard of length for the metric system. He died on 21 June 1885, aged 70, in Paris. Link to Wikipedia biography