advent of lighter weight, higher strength materials, and optimization has introduced thin walled structures in which buckling precedes failure. Hence stability has become one of the main governing factors in the design of shell panels. Archer et al. have found the buckling loads of shallow spherical shells adopting finite-difference method. Leicester using double series, and Dhatt through finite element procedure, have investigated the buckling and postbuckling behavior of spherical shells. In the present analysis a matrix method is used to study the buckling and postbuckling behavior of shallow shells due to uniformly distributed transverse loads. Numerical work has been done for cylindrical and spherical shells with rectangular planform. Both the clamped and the simply supported boundary conditions have been treated.