Yakov Benveniste: Long-life Engineering Professor at TAU.

1943-2015.

Professor Emeritus Yakov Benveniste passed away on March 12, 2015 of brain cancer at age 71.

       Born December 23, 1943 in Izmir Turkey, he graduated from his high school and began studying Civil Engineering in Robert College Istanbul. Yakov excelled in his undergraduate studies and was admitted to the prestigious PhD program in Civil Engineering at UC Berkeley. After completing 'cum laude' his doctorate dissertation on 'Wave Propagation in Elastic Materials' under the guidance of Prof. J. Lubliner, Yakov was offered an academic position in the newly established MMS (Mechanics, Materials & Structures) Department in the Faculty of Engineering at Tel Aviv University, Israel. As one of the founders of the School of Engineering at TAU, Yakov continued to set up the high research standards and served as a role model for many of us as a profound and innovative researcher, meticulous and exquisite teacher, and mostly as a genuine gentleman and devoted colleague. Before his official academic retirement from TAU in 2012, Yakov was appointed as the incumbent of the Chair in Micromechanics and served as the Head of the Engineering Faculty Academic Personnel and Promotion Committee.

       Professor Benveniste will be well remembered for his many seminal contributions to the fields of micromechanics of composite materials and piezoelectric composites. He was interested in formulating and establishing a consistent theoretical framework for determining the effective moduli of piezoelectric composites and other microstructures in composite media, as well as in specifying the proper boundary conditions pertaining between several non-thin imperfect elastic interfaces in connection with the cloaking problem. Yakov was always able to put forward and explain his ideas in a clear and rather simplified manner and for this reason his works are generally highly cited and well appreciated by the community. As an example, we note his paper entitled '' A New Approach to the Application of Mori-Tanaka's Theory of Composite Materials'' (Mechanics of Materials. 6, 147-157, 1987), which has been cited more than 1500 times!  During his impressive academic career, Yakov has published more than 100 papers in the leading Journals on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and below, just for the purpose of illustration and in order to demonstrate the versatility of the research problems that he has dealt with, we mention his last ten publications in the prestigious JMPS. Many of Yakov's papers are indeed single-authored, nevertheless he had much fruitful collaborations with prominent scientists all around the world and as a result has acquired many close friends. Yakov was a frequent reviewer for most of the leading Journals in the field of Applied Mechanics and also served as an Associate Editor for several Journals.  

       The late Professor Yakov Benveniste is survived by his wife Miriam, his son Eli and daughter Yael (both TAU graduates in Electrical Engineering), his two brothers Alber and Haim and his four grandchildren.  He will be greatly missed by his family, friends, students and colleagues!

        Last 10 JMPS Publications of Prof. Y. Benveniste:

1. Y. Benveniste, Thermal Expansion of Polycrystalline Aggregates Consisting of Elongated Crystals and Containing Cylindrical Pores o Inclusions. J. Mech. Phys. Solids, 44, 137-153, 1996.

2. Y. Benveniste  & T. Miloh, On Neutral Inhomogeneities in Conduction Phenomena. J. Mech. Phys. Solids, 47, 1873-1892, 1999.

3. Y. Benveniste  & G.W. Milton, New Exact Results for the Effective Electric, Elastic, Piezoelectric and other Properties of Composite Ellipsoidal Assemblage. J. Mech. Phys. Solids, 51, 1773-1813, 2003.

4. M.B. Rubin & Y. Benveniste, A Cosserat Shell Model for Interfaces in Elastic Media. J. Mech. Phys. Solids, 52, 1023-1052, 2004.

5. Q.C. He  & Y. Benveniste,  Exactly Solvable Spherically Anisotropic Thermoelastic Microstructure. J. Mech. Phys. Solids, 52, 2661-2682, 2004.

6. Y. Benvesiste, A General Interface Model for a Three-Dimensional Curved Thin Anisotropic Interface Between Two Anisotropic Media. J. Mech. Phys. Solids, 54,708-734, 2006.

7. Y. Benveniste, Revisiting the Generalized Self-Consistent Scheme in Composites: Clarification of Some Aspects and a New Formulation. J. Mech. Phys. Solids, 56, 2984-3002, 2008.

8. Y. Benveniste  & G.W. Milton, The Effective Medium and the Average Field Approximations vis-a vis the Hashin-Shtrikman Bounds: The Self Consistent Scheme in Matrix-based Composites.

    J. Mech. Phys. Solids, 58. 1026-1038, 2010.

9. Y. Benveniste, Two Models of Three-Dimensional Thin Interfaces and Variable Conductivity and their Fulfilment of the Reciprocal Theorem. J. Mech. Phys. Solids, 60, 1740-1752, 2012.

10. Y. Benveniste,  Exact Results for the Local Fields and the Effective Moduli of Fibrous Composites with Thickly Coated Fibers. J.  Mech. Phys. Solids, 71, 219-238, 2014.

 Touvia Miloh

 Professor Emeritus

 Faculty of Engineering

 Tel Aviv University, Israel.