João Arménio Correia Martins

João Martins died unexpectedly in his home in Lisbon on 5 August 2008.

In 2008 the Instituto Superior Técnico created the Professor João Arménio Correia Martins Award to recognize undergraduate students with a solid background in the fields of structural mechanics and computational mechanics. In 2009 the Associação Portuguesa de Mecânica Teórica, Aplicada e Computacional created the Young Researcher Award Professor João Martins. In 2009 the Sociedade Portuguesa de Biomecânica created the Professor João Martins Award to recognize the work of young researchers in the field of biomechanics.

Prof. João Martins was member of the general assembly of IUTAM and served as vice-president of the Portuguese Association for Theoretical, Applied and Computational Mechanics (APMTAC) in 2006 and 2007. He also served as president of the ICIST research institute in 2003, 2004, 2007 and 2008.

João Arménio Correia Martins was born on November 11, 1951, at the southern town of Olhão in Portugal. He attended high school at the Liceu Nacional de Faro which he completed in 1969. Afterwards João Martins moved to Lisbon where he was graduate student of Civil Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) until 1976. He was a research assistant and assistant instructor at IST until 1981. Subsequently, he entered the graduate school in the College of Engineering, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics of The University of Texas at Austin, USA. There he obtained a MSc in 1983 with a thesis titled A Numerical Analysis of a Class of Problems in Elastodynamics with Friction Effects and a PhD in 1986 with a thesis titled Dynamic Frictional Contact Problems Involving Metallic Bodies, both supervised by Prof. John Tinsley Oden. He returned to Portugal in 1986 and became assistant professor at IST. In 1989 he became associate professor and in 1996 he earned the academic degree of “agregado” from Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. Later, in 2005, he became full professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture of IST.