The 12th Congress of the International Society for Rock Mechanics (ISRM) was held in Beijing, China, in October 2011 in the fiftieth year of the life of the Society which was established formally on 24 May 1962 in Salzburg, Austria. This paper which is a slightly revised version of one presented at the Congress (Brown, 2011), discusses the emergence of rock mechanics as a distinctive engineering and scientific discipline, the state and achievements of the discipline at the time the ISRM was founded in 1962, the events leading up to the formation of the Society, the development and achievements of the Society in the 50 years since 1962 and the progress made in the discipline of rock mechanics and rock engineering since that time.
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