Although the theory of thermoelasticity has a long history, its foun dations having been laid in the first half of the nineteenth century by Duhamel and Neumann, wide-spread interest in this field did not develop until the years subsequent to World War Two. There are good reasons for this sudden and continuing revival of interest. First, in the field of aeronautics, the high velocities of modern aircraft have been found to give rise to aerodynamic heating; in turn, this produces intense thermal stresses and, by lowering the elastic limit, reduces the strength of the aircraft structure....