The Deborah Number

JAN 01, 1964

The following lines are from an after‐dinner talk presented at the Fourth International Congress on Rheology, which took place last August in Providence, R. I. Marcus Reiner, research professor at the Israel Institute of Technology, is currently in the United States as a visiting professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3051374

M. Reiner

In 1928 I came from Palestine to Easton, Pa., to assist Eugene Cook Bingham at the birth of Rheology. I felt strangely at home. There was Bethlehem quite near, there was a river Jordan and a village called little Egypt. The situation was, however, also slightly confusing. To go from Bethlehem to Egypt, one had to cross the river Jordan, a topological feature which did not conform to the original. Then there were, here, places such as Allen town to which there was no analogy. And this could lead to strange situations, such as when a girl at school was asked where Christ was born and replied, “In Allentown”. When corrected by “No, in Bethlehem,” she remarked, “I knew it was somewhere around here.”

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M. Reiner, United States.