S. Mahalingam

Selvadurai Mahalingam (16 January 1926 – 3 November 2015) was a Sri Lankan Tamil mechanical engineer and academic.

Early life and family Mahalingam was born on 16 January 1926 in Alaveddy in northern Ceylon. He was the son of Selvadurai and Nagamma Sellasaraswathy. When he was young his family moved to Malaya. He received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Sheffield in 1956.

Career Mahalingam joined the Engineering Faculty of the University of Ceylon (later University of Ceylon, Peradeniya, University of Peradeniya) when it was established in 1950. In 1958 he wrote highly acclaimed research paper on vibration, Vibration of Branched System: A Displacement Excitation Approach, which was published in the Journal of Applied Mechanics. After retirement in 1991 he served as an emeritus professor at the University of Peradeniya.

Mahalingam received the Vidya Jyothi honour in 2005. He died on 3 November 2015 at the private North Central Hospital in Jaffna.