J. N. REDDY, PhD, is University Distinguished Professor and inaugural holder of the Oscar S. Wyatt Endowed Chair in Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station. He has authored and coauthored several books, including Energy and Variational Methods in Applied Mechanics, Advanced Engineering Analysis (with M. L. Rasmussen), and A Mathematical Theory of Finite Elements (with J. T. Oden), all published by Wiley.