Abstract: Firstly, this paper states briefly the main points of the three most popular numerical methods (F.D.M.,F.E.M.and B. E. M. ) and their advantages, and then, describes the development and application of these methods to soil mechanics from 1940’s,60’s and 70’s respectively. Finally, for the future development of numerical methods in soil mechanics, the writer suggests some opinions on study of constitutive models of soil, the derivation and computation of numerical method itself and comparison between numerical computation and field measurement.