Continuum Mech. Thermodyn. (2010) 22:413–419 DOI 10.1007/s00161-010-0151-z PREFACE Alexander Movchan · Andrej Cherkaev · John Dempsey · Mark Ayzenberg-Stepanenko · Evgeny Sher Preface to the special issue in honour of Leonid Slepyan Received: 24 May 2010 / Accepted: 24 May 2010 / Published online: 21 July 2010 © Springer-Verlag 2010 On behalf of the Editorial Board of Continuum Mechanics and Thermodynamics, we are honoured to ded- icate this Special Issue to Professor Leonid Slepyan whose pioneering work receives admiration from the research communities in dynamics of continuous and structured media, hydroelasticity, dynamics of fracture, mechanics of composites, and phase transition in heterogeneous solids. The idea of this volume was initiated independently by several colleagues 2years ago when Leonid Slepyan was celebrating his 80th Birthday. Leonid Slepyan started his career as a naval engineer, after graduation from the elite Naval Engineering Institute in 1951 and then Naval Academy in 1960, in the city of Leningrad of the former Soviet Union. The job of a Navy officer included many practical tasks, and in particular, Leonid Slepyan was the commanding officer on a floating dock during a long and challenging voyage to Vladivostok across Indian and Pacific Oceans. However, Leonid’s destiny and passion was the science of engineering. His outstanding analytical A. Movchan (B ) Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK E-mail: abm@liverpool.ac.uk A. Cherkaev Department of Mathematics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA J. Dempsey Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Clarkson University, Potsdam, USA M. Ayzenberg-Stepanenko Department of Mathematics, Ben Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel E. Sher Institute of Mining, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia