Professor . Zienkiewicz, CBE, FRS, FREng is Professor Emeritus and Director of the Institute for Numerical Methods in Engineering at the University of Wales, Swansea, UK. He holds the UNESCO Chair of Numerical Methods in Engineering at the Technical University of Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. He was the head of the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Wales Swansea between 1961 and 1989. He established that department as one of the primary centres of ®nite element research. In 1968 he became the Founder Editor of the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering which still remains today the major journal.