History of “Sneddon” solution in contact mechanics

At the beginning of 1941, Ludwig Föppl published an 8-page paper “Elastische Beanspruchung des Erdbodens unter Fundamenten”. The main result this was further developed by his doctoral student Gerhard Schubert in 1942. These publications and contain many results obtained researchers contact mechanics subsequent decades 20th century. Unfortunately, both papers have been forgotten, which is not particularly surprising considering years when they appeared (1941-42). solution reached a great degree international recognition through Sneddon (1965) – one most cited history mechanics. Yet merely offers different derivation approach to obtain already known solutions. finally transformed into simple mnemonic rule Method Dimensionality Reduction (MDR).