The History of Rheology
- Although rheology was not an official branch of physics until 1929, many scientists and specialists contributed to study of unusual materials before 1929. For example, Archimedes of Syracuse (around 250 BCE) and Isaac Newton (1687) both contributed to the study of ideal materials.
- In 1929, Eugene Bingham wanted to create a branch of physics that specifically dealt with problems pertaining to unusual liquids and solids. After consulting a language professor, Bingham went with "rheo" taken from Greek, meaning "everything flows" and "-ology" meaning "the study of."
- Rheology, after its conception and with the inclusion of new fields such as computational science, has created a branch of physics that overlaps with many other fields, such as thermodynamics, reaction engineering and thermodynamics. Rheology also has applications in magneto-rheological fluids and nano-composites.