ABSTRACT
This chapter constitutes a historical note on the creators of the theory of elasticity, and discusses some of their achievements that contributed to the progress of this science. We start with Galileo Galilei who, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was the first to work on strength and fracture of beams and, especially, on cantilever beams. Robert Hooke in the seventeenth century was the one who discovered the law of elasticity that now carries his name. We end with notes on the six scientists of the twentieth century: M. T. Huber, S. P. Timoshenko, W. Nowacki, G. Fichera, B. A. Boley, and M. E. Gurtin.
