Stephen Prokofievitch Timoshenko 687 played host to such men as L.Prandtl,R.V.Southwell,H.M.Westergaard and many others.The raising of funds to enable lecturers from Europe to attend sometimes caused problems.In his autobiography Timoshenko describes how once he had to turn for financial aid to the automobile industry where someone had queried the meaning of the word 'symposium'.They looked it up in the dictionary and discovered that it meant some kind of drinking party,but despite this interpretation funds were provided! Although there appeared during Timoshenko's years at Michigan a paper on The stiffness of suspension bridges and another on Vibration of bridges,his scientific work at this time was chiefly confined to the writing of engineering textbooks.In fact,except for Applied elasticity,all but three of his many text- books appeared during the years that he was at Michigan.These included: Strength of materials,Vibration problems in engineering,Theory of elasticity, Theory of elastic stability,and an elementary book,Engineering mechanics, written in collaboration with D.H.Young.Much of the material for these books was,of course,extracted from his earlier Russian books on strength of materials and theory of elasticity. In discussing Timoshenko's books,one reviewer has made the following remarks:Few practising engineers ever have occasion to make bibliographical references in their original papers to textbooks in their chosen field of study. The active front in most branches of engineering research is so far ahead of the territory already captured that references to the consolidated gains in textbooks rarely appear in the records of current achievements.Yet the name of one author of textbooks on engineering science often occurs in the footnotes in the technical literature.The reason is not far to seek:his subject matter is so authoritative and so well arranged that it has come to be regarded not merely as the standard text on particular problems but also as an indispensable source of reference as much to professional engineers as to students.' Stanford University In 1936 Timoshenko left the University of Michigan and moved to Stanford University.He lived in Palo Alto for almost thirty years,longer than he stayed in any other place during his lifetime.His Spanish style house was on the edge of town and there were attractive walks all around.The semi-tropical trees and plants appealed to him as did the small neighbouring towns and San Francisco with its magnificent park that extends down to the ocean.Also living in Palo Alto were several other cultured families of Russian refugees with whom they were soon acquainted.His younger brother Vladimir also came to Palo Alto as the university had offered him a chair at their Food Research Institute. At Stanford,Timoshenko continued much the same type of activity that had occupied him at Michigan.There were perhaps fewer candidates for the Ph.D. degree,but this was more than offset by the large group of two-year engineer's degree candidates.This was a professional degree awarded for the completion of studies comparable to that required for the Ph.D.degree but requiring a