On 9, July, Roger Owen, fellow of the Royal Society of London, member of the National Academy of engineering, foreign academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, visited Wuhan University and gave a lecture about the past and future of finite element. He was also awarded the visiting professor appointment certificate.

In more than an hour's presentation, Academician Roger Owen firstly reviewed the history of finite element, including the functional evolution process, the principle of development and its perfection, and the gradual change from theory to program. Later he talked about the hot topics of the finite element analysis with the combination of theory and cases. He also introduces new fields that have employed the finite element method, such as dams, oil and grain drying. In the end, he enlightened the problems and the trend of the research on the finite element in the future.

Academician Roger Owen is a world famous scholar in the field of computational mechanics. His research focuses on solving various nonlinear problems encountered in science and engineering research as well as the dispersion system and multi-physical field coupling problems. His original series of research, which are internationally recognized, has made a great contribution to the development of finite element method and discrete element method.

(Rewritten by Yuqian Zhang, edited by Yue Rao & Sijia Hu )