Dear karol,

Although formulated by Maxwell in 1865, it is generally attributed to Richard Edler von Mises (1913).Tytus Maksymilian Huber (1904), in a paper in Polish, anticipated to some extent this criterion. This criterion is also referred to as the Maxwell–Huber–Hencky–von Mises theory.

With my best regards

Prof. Bachir ACHOUR

Dear Bachir,

I know those facts from Wikipedia. My question was quite provocative: why do we acknowledge work of one researcher, paying little or no attention to the other, who did thw same thing earlier. I have read the papers of Huber and Von Mises, but I do not know any work of Maxwell upon this subject. 

EDIT: OK. I have found something: "James Clerk Maxwell proposed that strain energy of distortion was critical in letters to William Thomson, but never published it". In: W. Hosford, Mechanical Behaviour of Materials.

With my best regards

Karol Frydrych

Popularity and expertise appear to play here as with many other cases in life.

Dear Karol, the "ideas wins in prepared world". Historical events have been occured in a proper time... Let take into account the factor of fortuity too. By a lucky chance Von Mises became a person which name is more often associated with plasticity and strength criterion than another experts.

Plus another funny circumstance has been played, namely, euphony of name. Probably, "Von Mises" blend too well.

With best regards

If a mathematical theorem is named after a person, then as a rule it has been first stated by someone else. The de Saint Venant strain criterion is named after him because he was the well known scientist who could give credit to a failure criterion which otherwise was not accepted (and is outdated today). Richard von Mises derived his yield criterion independently with purely mathematical reasoning. He just proposed the simplest mathematical form which is independent of hydrostatic stress and symmetric in tension and compression. To me it seems that in both cases we use the name of the person who promoted the criterion successfully. Richard von Mises is from the small country Austria, flew from the Nazis first to Turkey than to USA. Today some people do not even know his name correctly and write van Mises (van occurs in Dutch names). I am sure that the use of his name is not a form on nationalism.