I am pleased to announce that with this issue the Journal of Mechanical Design moves to bi-monthly publication. Your continued support has provided us the opportunity to publish in 2004 approximately 20 papers in each of six issues for a total of 1100 pages.
The success of a journal is measured not only by its ability to attract excellent research papers, but also by its use by other researchers. Efforts to promote this use serve the authors and our research community. The keywords that characterize the content of a paper are data crucial to an effective search using electronic databases, and are best provided by the authors. The specification of keywords and a review of the recent literature using these keywords will benefit all of our community as we move forward in 2004.
I am pleased to wish Happy 90th Birthday to our colleague Professor Faydor Litvin, of the University of Illinois, Chicago.
Professor Litvin obtained his Masters of Science at St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute in 1937, and the equivalent of his Ph.D. in 1944 from the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, and Doctor of Technical Science from Leningrad Polytechnic Institute in 1954. His work on the theory of gearing, gear design and manufacture, and the theory of spatial mechanisms and manipulators has lead to over 290 publications, 10 monographs and 25 inventions, three of which are U.S. Patents.
He was a professor in mechanism and machine theory at St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute for over 30 years, and was department head for 13 years before emigrating to the United States in 1979 to take his current position at UIC. He has graduated more than 75 Ph.D. students.
I recall meeting Prof. Litvin a year or two after his arrival at UIC at one of my first ASME conferences, and I feel now, as I did then, that the mechanical design research community is fortunate to have distinguished colleagues like Faydor Litvin, who are so energetic in scholarship and generous in spirit.
