| Honorific Prefix: | Vidya Jyothi |
| S. Mahalingam | |
| Birth Date: | 16 January 1926 |
| Birth Place: | Alaveddy, Ceylon |
| Death Place: | Jaffna, Sri Lanka |
| Occupation: | Academic |
Selvadurai Mahalingam (16 January 1926 - 3 November 2015) was a Sri Lankan Tamil mechanical engineer and academic.
Mahalingam was born on 16 January 1926 in Alaveddy in northern Ceylon.[1] He was the son of Selvadurai and Nagamma Sellasaraswathy.[2] When he was young his family moved to Malaya.[1] He was educated at Maxwell School and Victoria College in Malaya.[1] He returned to Ceylon aged 20 and joined Ceylon Technical College in 1946, graduating with a first class B.Sc.Eng. degree.[1] [3] He received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Sheffield in 1956.[1]
Mahalingam married Devaki.[1] [4]
Mahalingam joined the Engineering Faculty of the University of Ceylon (later University of Ceylon, Peradeniya, University of Peradeniya) when it was established in 1950.[1] [3] [5] 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.[1] [5] Mahalingam received a D.Sc.Eng. degree from the University of London after which he was promoted to professor.[1] [5] [6] After retirement in 1991 he served as an emeritus professor at the University of Peradeniya.[6] [7]
Mahalingam received the Vidya Jyothi honour in 2005.[8] He died on 3 November 2015 at the private North Central Hospital in Jaffna.[1] [5]