REINER, MARKUS

REINER, MARKUS (1886–1976), Israeli engineer. Born in Czernovtsy, Reiner served as an officer in the Austrian army during World War i. He emigrated to Ereẓ Israel in 1922, first working as an agricultural laborer. He then became chief construction engineer of the public works department in Jerusalem, where he remained for 25 years, engaged in road, bridge, and housing construction and the restoration of ancient and historical sites, such as Herod's irrigation channels in Jericho. In 1926 Reiner published a paper on his research in the flow of elastic liquid in a capillary. His research was independently and simultaneously duplicated by E. Buckingham of the U.S. National Bureau of Standards, and their findings are thus known as the "Buckingham-Reiner equation." Their work resulted in a new branch of physics and mechanics known as rheology. From 1932 Reiner spent two years at Lafayette College, in Eaton, Pennsylvania, as a research professor, working with Professor E.C. Bingham, whom he joined as coeditor of the Journal of Rheology. Reiner's research covered a wide selection of subjects in mechanics, including investigation of rheological phenomena in the body. In 1948 he joined the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology – in Haifa as professor of practical mechanics.

Apart from nearly 200 articles and papers, Reiner published three standard works which have been translated into several languages: Ten Lectures on Theoretical Rheology (1943), Deformation Strain and Flow (1949), and Agricultural Rheology (1957), written together with G.W. Scott Blair of England. Reiner was awarded the Israel prize in 1958. He was a member of the Israel Academy of Science from its inception and of the Israel government's Research Council.

[Carl Alpert]