Maurice Anthony Biot

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Maurice Anthony Biot (May 25, 1905, Antwerp, Belgium – September 12, 1985, New York City) was a Belgian-American physicist and the founder of the theory of poroelasticity.

He studied at Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium where he received a bachelor's degrees in philosophy (1927), mining engineering (1929) and electrical engineering (1930), and Doctor of Science in 1931. He obtained his PhD in Aeronautical Science from the California Institute of Technology in 1932.

In 1930s and 1940s Biot worked at Harvard, Louvain, Columbia and Brown universities, and later for a number of companies and government agencies. During the period between 1932 and 1942, he conceived and then fully developed the response spectrum method (RSM) for earthquake engineering^[1] which was further promoted by George W Housner.

In the period between 1935 and 1962 Biot published a number of scientific papers that lay the foundations of the theory of poroelasticity (now known as Biot theory), which describes the mechanical behaviour of fluid-saturated porous media. He also made a number of important contributions in areas of aerodynamics, irreversible thermodynamics and heat transfer, viscoelasticity and thermoelasticity, among others.

Biot was interested in reports of unidentified flying objects, and in a 1952 interview with Life threw his support behind the extraterrestrial hypothesis.^[2]

Biot is a recipient of the Timoshenko Medal (1962).

[edit] References

^ Biot, M.A. (1941). Bull. of Soc. Seism. of Amer., v.31, N.2. ed. Mechanical Analysis for the Prediction of Earthquake Stresses.
^ "Have We Visitors From Space?" Darrach, H. B. and Robert Ginna. Life Magazine. 07 April 1952