The Journal of Elasticity was in its 50th volume when Roger Fosdick became its Editor-in-Chief in 1998, following the 16-year tenure of Don Carlson in that position. Roger and the Editorial Board have since overseen the production of 102 volumes, doing so with assiduous attention to ensuring scientific merit and preserving the high standard of scholarship that Marvin Stippes established as founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal in 1971. This was achieved despite sweeping changes in the realm of academic publishing. I wish to take this opportunity to congratulate Roger and the Editorial Board for their successes and to recognize their extraordinary efforts on behalf of the Journal and, by extension, their monumental service to our community. I would also like to thank Nathalie Jacobs and her associates at Springer for their unwavering support of the Journal and its mission.

It is my privilege and honor to be selected as the next Editor-in-Chief of the Journal. I am acutely aware of the responsibilities that accompany the job, and I accepted those responsibilities only after considerable deliberation. In so doing, I was buoyed by admiration for the scholarly contributions of the members of the Editorial Board, all of whom have established international reputations and high visibility in their chosen areas of research, and many of whom have showed dedicated support for the aims and goals of the Journal by occasionally submitting their own works for publication therein. My decision was also eased considerably by Roger’s kind agreement to remain affiliated with the Journal as a member of the Editorial Board.

In closing, I would like to express gratitude to the authors who select the Journal as the preferred forum for their research contributions and, moreover, all colleagues who so generously devote their expertise and valuable time to the peer-review process and to the perpetuation of quality in research. I promise to work closely with the Editorial Board and Nathalie Jacobs to continue to improve and promote the Journal as a vital, scholarly based research publication directed toward the advancement of discovery in the physical and mathematical science of solids, and I welcome any suggestions members of the greater mechanics community might have toward achieving those objectives.

January 2022