04-30-2012, 11:19 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-30-2012, 11:36 PM by david-smith.)
Henry Degenkolb
Henry Degenkolb is one of the pillars of the structural engineering profession. He practiced his trade in San Francisco for more than 50 years, consulting on most of the major seismic safety issues of his time and gaining an international reputation for making buildings structurally safer and public policies and building codes stronger.
To most individuals, earthquakes are frightening events, but to Degenkolb, they were his laboratory. He studied them, visited them, and designed buildings "as if an earthquake would occur in the next five years. When one thinks that way," it sure stiffens up your back," he told one interviewer.
After the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, California legislators started looking for resistive designs and passed statewide legislation for the construction of public schools. It was in this environment that Degenkolb arrived on the scene from Peoria, Illinois graduating in civil engineering from UC Berkeley in 1936. He helped design buildings for the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939-40 and joined the firm of John Gould, the chief structural engineer for the exposition company. After 10 years he became a partner in the firm and its name changed to Gould and Degenkolb. When John Gould died in 1961, the firm became H. J. Degenkolb Associates, Engineers, which still exists today with nearly 150 employees who share in the success as well as the ownership of the company.
Unique among his peers, Degenkolb was the first to understand the need for an interdisciplinary approach that would encompass geophysics as well as the engineering sciences. As a result, he became a member of the Seismological Society of America in 1947, long before others in his field saw the value of studying this discipline.
In 1952 he started visiting the site of earthquakes around the world to gain a personal understanding of building design failures and human loss.
Degenkolb was often considered a "consultant's consultant." He served as an advisor to local, regional and national governments, including serving on the President's Task Force on Earthquake Hazards Reduction in 1970, the California Seismic Safety Commission from '69 to '74, and numerous professional organizations on earthquake and structural engineering. He, helped organize the First World Conference on Earthquake Engineering for the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.
He wrote many papers and articles and received several professional awards and honors, including the American Society of Civil Engineers Ernest E. Howard Award in 1967 for preeminence in earthquake engineering.
Henry Degenkolb was married to Anna Alma Nygren and they had five children. He died in December 1989.
Ruth Gordon
When Ruth Gordon chained herself to the Pacific Stock Exchange on August 26, 1980, she was worried. Not that she'd be arrested or labeled an upstart. A woman in a traditionally male profession, she'd heard that kind of name-calling before. But she was concerned that a banner her fellow protesters had hung on the building's façade was blocking both of the building's exits. An ERA advocate, yes, but first she was an engineer and engineers are forever concerned for the safety of individuals inside buildings.
But Gordon was more than just an engineer. She was a pioneer. She was one of just two female engineers in her Stanford class of 1948 and the only woman to graduate in civil engineering and earn a master's in structures. Despite her credentials, she would often use just her initials to gain a job interview. Her credentials finally caught the eye of the late Isador Thompson a San Francisco structural engineer who "didn't care if you were green," Gordon reported later. That was in 1950.
Over the next 35 years, Gordon rose to the top of her profession and became the first woman Structural Engineer in California in 1959; the first woman member of SEAONC in 1953, the first woman president of the Bay Area Engineering Council in 1982-83, the first female to receive Tau Beta Pi's Eminent Engineer Award (1995), and many other awards and recognitions. She lectured frequently to young women on the importance of studying science and math and was a key spokesperson for the profession on earthquake safety and protection. She has been profiled in The Women's Book of World Records and Achievements.
From 1959 through 1984, Gordon was employed by the Office of the State Architect/Structural Safety Section, for which she monitored the construction of all hospital and public school buildings in the nine-county area from Mendocino to Monterey. In 1984 she established Pegasus Engineering, Inc., a consulting engineering firm. In 1988 she completed an earthquake survivability study of 42 hospitals for the California Office of Statewide Hospital Planning and Development. Following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, she performed postearthquake evaluations of 14 multistory buildings at San Francisco General Hospital and 12 buildings at the San Francisco Kaiser Hospital.
An avid sailor, Gordon purchased a 26-foot sloop in 1950 with her husband, Michael Schnapp. When he was called to duty in the Korean War, Gordon and three friends formed the an all-female racing team. The Madeleine didn't win the first race, but did sail past two all-male crews. Gordon went on to become the recipient of the highest honor of the Pacific Inter-Club Yachting Association: the 2001 Yachtsman of the Year.
James M. Gere
James M. Gere, civil engineer and founder of Stanford's Blume Earthquake Engineering Center
Gere was known for his outgoing manner, his teaching in and out of the classroom, his athleticism and his skill in civil engineering. "He was, without a doubt, the finest engineer and professor and mentor and adviser any student or faculty member ever had, period," said Haresh Shah, a student of Gere's who became a Stanford professor of engineering and retired in 1998.
Gere and Shah founded the Blume Earthquake Engineering Center in 1974, and they co-directed it until 1986. Gere also became the founding head in 1980 of the Stanford Committee on Earthquake Preparedness, which urged campus members to brace and strengthen office equipment, furniture and other things that could pose a hazard if the ground shook.
Gere contributed to civil engineering and earthquake research with a stream of articles and technical papers. He wrote nine books on engineering, and mathematical theory and applications. He co-authored a well-known text, Mechanics of Materials, in 1972 and was the sole author of later editions. Shah called this "the most popular book used by everyone in the world who is a mechanical or civil engineer."
Gere was not only a pioneer on paper—he and Shah were among the first foreigners to travel in 1980 to Tangshan, China, to study the devastating aftermath left by the major earthquake that shook the region in 1976.
Gere came to Stanford as a doctoral student in 1952, when he was awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship. The university offered him a faculty spot in 1954, after he completed his doctorate in applied mechanics, and Gere began his 34-year career of engaging his students and pioneering earthquake technology. From 1960 to 1970, he was associate dean of the School of Engineering, and from 1967 to 1972, he served as chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering. He retired from Stanford in 1988.
Gere's track record at Stanford wasn't just academic, but literal—he was an avid runner, and he helped to form a running group for university members, affectionately called "The Angell
Field Ancients," because Gere and his founding colleagues liked to poke fun at their age. The group gained popularity over the years, and graduate students, faculty and staff joined the pack. He tackled the Boston Marathon in 1973, at age 48, finishing in three hours and 13 minutes.
He also hiked frequently, sometimes 50 miles a day, and regularly visited Yosemite and the Grand Canyon national parks. He took students, colleagues and loved ones out into the wilderness and shared his knowledge of geology and the outdoors. Shah recalls that some people called Gere "the ranger," because he hiked skillfully and spouted facts with a park ranger's acumen, often wearing a brimmed ranger hat. His wanderlust and boundless energy took him to Mount Everest in 1986, where he and Shah hiked to the base camp.
Gere was born June 14, 1925, in Syracuse, N.Y. He joined the Army Air Corps at 17 and worked as a bombsight mechanic for three years. He earned undergraduate and master's degrees in civil engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1949 and 1951, respectively. He worked as an instructor and later as a research associate for Rensselaer between 1949 and 1952.
Gere married his high school sweetheart, Janice Platt, in June 1946, and they were married 61 years at the time of his death.
He is survived by his wife and their three children: daughter Susan and sons William and David; grandchildren Clifford and Rachel Gere of Hollister and Dewitt Durham of Palo Alto; and his brothers Frederick of Roseville and William of Cheshire.
Services will be held Saturday, Feb. 23, at 2 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Palo Alto, 1985 Louis Road, at Embarcadero Road, where Gere and his wife became members in 1952 and where Gere was deacon in the 1960s.
Hayley Rutger is a science-writing intern at the Stanford News Service.
Donald P. Coduto
Donald P. Coduto is currently a professor of geotechnical engineering and chair of the Civil Engineering Department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He earned a BS in civil engineering from California Stat Polytechnic University, Pomona, an MS in geotechnical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MBA from Claremont Graduate University. He is an ASCE Fellow, a licensed civil engineer and a licensed geotechnical engineer, and has worked on a variety of geotechnical projects for both private and public sector clients.
R. C. Hibbeler
Russ Hibbeler graduated from the University of Illinois-Urbana with a B.S. in Civil Engineering (major in structures) and an M.S. in Nuclear Engineering. He obtained his Ph.D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Northwestern University. Hibbeler's professional experience includes postdoctoral work in reactor safety and analysis at Argonne National Laboratory, and structural work at Chicago Bridge and Iron, Sargent and Lundy, Tucson. He has practiced engineering in Ohio, New York, and Louisiana. He has taught at the University of Illinois-Urbana, Youngstown State University, Illinois Institute of Technology, and Union College. Hibbeler currently teaches at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.
Tom Paulay
Emeritus Professor Tom Paulay
On Friday 26th June New Zealand lost one of its most eminent structural engineers
with the death of Professor Tom Paulay. During his 28 years with the Department of
Civil Engineering Tom had a profound world-wide influence on the design of
engineering structures to resist earthquake excitation. His work has also been a major
contributor to the international standing of the Department of Civil Engineering in the
field of earthquake engineering.
Tom was born in Sopron, Hungary, on the 26th May 1923 and he was initially
destined for a life in the Royal Hungarian Army. After attending a boarding school for
military cadets in Sopron he entered the Royal Hungarian Military Academy in Budapest.
On graduation he was posted as a second lieutenant to the same cavalry regiment in
which his father served for many years.
In 1944 he faced the advancing Russian army in the Prypet Marshes in what was
then known as Eastern Poland. At the age of 21, after mounting casualties, he found
himself in command of 278 men and 308 horses. Much action and wounds received in
Poland, and later in Hungary, resulted in many months spent in various military hospitals
and left him somewhat deaf. This partial deafness is remembered by both students and
colleagues.
After he was discharged from the army in 1946 he, with many other returned
servicemen, joined the 300 students in the first year of civil engineering at the Technical
University of Budapest. Tom described lectures in the bombed out ruins of the university
with the lecturers writing on the blackboards whilst wearing knitted gloves and two
raincoats to keep out the cold. The student accommodation was no warmer. The harsh
economic conditions, and the reduced immediate demand for engineers, resulted in a 75%
failure rate in the first year. In 1948, after Stalin and the Red Army imposed total control
over Hungarian society, Tom was one of the few students to escape from Hungary to
Austria and West Germany.
In West Germany he enrolled at the Technical University of Munich, which, after
the allied bombing during the war, was in an even worse state that the Technical
University of Budapest. The lack of financial resources soon terminated his attempt to
continue his studies in civil engineering. In November 1948 Tom returned to Austria to
see the girl that he had met on his initial escape from Hungary. One year later Tom and
Herta were married. Tom spent 3 years in Germany as a stateless refugee working with a
charitable organization.
In 1951 Tom, Herta and daughter Dorothy were granted a scholarship by a group
of Catholic students at Victoria University in Wellington to come to New Zealand. On
September 11 1951 Tom started working as a maintenance labourer in Oamaru. Tom
described his job as a labourer as a wonderful educational experience. Although he was
already learning English, this was where he was first exposed to the rich Kiwi vocabulary
of His Majesty’s English, as practised by the railway labourers. Fifty years to the day
they went back to Oamaru to celebrate but the event was somewhat overtaken by other
happenings in New York.
Tom resumed his studies in civil engineering as a third year student in 1952 at the
University of Canterbury under the guidance of Professor Harry Hopkins. Structural
engineering, and particularly design, interested him most in his studies. It was noted that
the final 14 day examination project chosen by Tom was to design a reinforced concrete
shell roof, a subject not covered in the syllabus for civil engineering. On completing his
studies in 1954 Tom joined the consulting engineering practice of Don Bruce-Smith
where he worked for the next eight years designing many reinforced concrete buildings.
In 1961 he was invited by Harry Hopkins to apply for a lecturer position in the
Department of Civil Engineering to teach structural design. Tom initially told his classes
that the courses would be taught in Hungarian but with a very strong New Zealand accent.
Tom’s afternoon 3 hour design classes started with a one to one and half hour lecture,
followed by time in the drawing office. The lectures were intense, a 4 sheets of finely
written foolscap notes could be taken during that time. The afternoons were usually an
hour to an hour and a half longer than scheduled and sometimes rolled over to Saturdays
as well. Tom is remembered for his enthusiasm and practical knowledge of structural
design, his interest in the welfare of the students and the injection of recent research
findings and ideas. This helped build up an interest in seismic engineering and it had a
major influence on design practice in New Zealand. Even 20 years after he retired some
of the final year design afternoons are still referred to as ‘the Tom Paulay afternoons’.
Tom quickly picked up the research aspects of structural engineering and during
his time he supervised and co-supervised 16 Ph.D students and 26 M.E students. In
1969 Tom completed his own Ph.D on the Coupling of Shear-Walls under the
supervision of Harry Hopkins. His interest in the behaviour of structural walls continued
for many years and his concept of diagonally reinforced coupling beams has become a
standard solution for obtaining a good ductile structure.
He also became interested in the concepts of Capacity Design and his work in
using the analogy of a chain where the design chose the selected weak ductile link,
usually the beams in a multi-storey frames, where the ductile behaviour would take place
in a major earthquake and all other links, the columns, joints and foundations, would be
sufficiently strong that only the chosen members would yield. The designer would tell the
building how to deform. This concept of the weak beam-strong column became the
design norm for buildings in New Zealand and many other earthquake prone countries.
His 1975 book with Professor Bob Park “Reinforced Concrete Structures’ became the
seminal work on capacity design. Tom also recognised the power of modern computer
analysis to extend the work in the laboratory and many M.E. students over the next few
years carried out a large amount of research to determine the over-strength factors
required to ensure that undesirable soft-storey failures would not occur in a major
earthquake. His work on structural walls resulted in the book “Design of Reinforced
Concrete and Masonry Buildings” in 1992 with Professor Nigel Priestley again brought
the latest research findings into the design world. Tom was promoted with a Personal
Chair in Civil Engineering in 1975 as recognition of his contribution to research and
teaching.
Tom retired from the Department of Civil Engineering in January1989 and
became an Emeritus Professor. He continued his research interests and to help supervise
post-graduate students, being present in the department for most afternoons until about
2006. Herta’s declining health meant that he spent more time at home. Herta’s death in
2007 hit Tom very hard. However, he still kept in touch with his former colleagues in the
department and always had that cheerful outlook that was part of Tom.
Tom was involved with the New Zealand Society of Earthquake Engineers and
was President for a term. He served on many New Zealand Building Code committees
and also on many American Concrete Institute committees. He was elected a Fellow of
the Royal Society and served as President of the International Association for earthquake
Engineering from 1992 to 1996. He received an OBE in 1986 and he has Honorary
Doctorates from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich in 1988, the Technical
University of Budapest in 1990, the Technical University of Bucharest in 1996 and the
National University of Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina in 1999. He has received too many
awards and honours to list here.
At the 14th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Beijing in October
2008 Tom was named as one the Legends in Earthquake Engineering. Being included as
one of the greatest names in earthquake engineering was a great honour for Tom and
earthquake engineering in New Zealand.
Tom is survived by his daughters Dorothy and Esther and son Gregory, and six
grand-children. He will be very much missed by the many thousand civil engineers in
New Zealand and overseas who have benefited from his great teaching. The effects of his
work in design approaches in earthquake engineering will continue long into the future.
His colleagues in the Department of Civil and Natural Resources Engineering will also
miss his cheery smile and that sense of humour which seemed to infect all around him.
Athol Carr
Henry Degenkolb is one of the pillars of the structural engineering profession. He practiced his trade in San Francisco for more than 50 years, consulting on most of the major seismic safety issues of his time and gaining an international reputation for making buildings structurally safer and public policies and building codes stronger.
To most individuals, earthquakes are frightening events, but to Degenkolb, they were his laboratory. He studied them, visited them, and designed buildings "as if an earthquake would occur in the next five years. When one thinks that way," it sure stiffens up your back," he told one interviewer.
After the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, California legislators started looking for resistive designs and passed statewide legislation for the construction of public schools. It was in this environment that Degenkolb arrived on the scene from Peoria, Illinois graduating in civil engineering from UC Berkeley in 1936. He helped design buildings for the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939-40 and joined the firm of John Gould, the chief structural engineer for the exposition company. After 10 years he became a partner in the firm and its name changed to Gould and Degenkolb. When John Gould died in 1961, the firm became H. J. Degenkolb Associates, Engineers, which still exists today with nearly 150 employees who share in the success as well as the ownership of the company.
Unique among his peers, Degenkolb was the first to understand the need for an interdisciplinary approach that would encompass geophysics as well as the engineering sciences. As a result, he became a member of the Seismological Society of America in 1947, long before others in his field saw the value of studying this discipline.
In 1952 he started visiting the site of earthquakes around the world to gain a personal understanding of building design failures and human loss.
Degenkolb was often considered a "consultant's consultant." He served as an advisor to local, regional and national governments, including serving on the President's Task Force on Earthquake Hazards Reduction in 1970, the California Seismic Safety Commission from '69 to '74, and numerous professional organizations on earthquake and structural engineering. He, helped organize the First World Conference on Earthquake Engineering for the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.
He wrote many papers and articles and received several professional awards and honors, including the American Society of Civil Engineers Ernest E. Howard Award in 1967 for preeminence in earthquake engineering.
Henry Degenkolb was married to Anna Alma Nygren and they had five children. He died in December 1989.
Ruth Gordon
When Ruth Gordon chained herself to the Pacific Stock Exchange on August 26, 1980, she was worried. Not that she'd be arrested or labeled an upstart. A woman in a traditionally male profession, she'd heard that kind of name-calling before. But she was concerned that a banner her fellow protesters had hung on the building's façade was blocking both of the building's exits. An ERA advocate, yes, but first she was an engineer and engineers are forever concerned for the safety of individuals inside buildings.
But Gordon was more than just an engineer. She was a pioneer. She was one of just two female engineers in her Stanford class of 1948 and the only woman to graduate in civil engineering and earn a master's in structures. Despite her credentials, she would often use just her initials to gain a job interview. Her credentials finally caught the eye of the late Isador Thompson a San Francisco structural engineer who "didn't care if you were green," Gordon reported later. That was in 1950.
Over the next 35 years, Gordon rose to the top of her profession and became the first woman Structural Engineer in California in 1959; the first woman member of SEAONC in 1953, the first woman president of the Bay Area Engineering Council in 1982-83, the first female to receive Tau Beta Pi's Eminent Engineer Award (1995), and many other awards and recognitions. She lectured frequently to young women on the importance of studying science and math and was a key spokesperson for the profession on earthquake safety and protection. She has been profiled in The Women's Book of World Records and Achievements.
From 1959 through 1984, Gordon was employed by the Office of the State Architect/Structural Safety Section, for which she monitored the construction of all hospital and public school buildings in the nine-county area from Mendocino to Monterey. In 1984 she established Pegasus Engineering, Inc., a consulting engineering firm. In 1988 she completed an earthquake survivability study of 42 hospitals for the California Office of Statewide Hospital Planning and Development. Following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, she performed postearthquake evaluations of 14 multistory buildings at San Francisco General Hospital and 12 buildings at the San Francisco Kaiser Hospital.
An avid sailor, Gordon purchased a 26-foot sloop in 1950 with her husband, Michael Schnapp. When he was called to duty in the Korean War, Gordon and three friends formed the an all-female racing team. The Madeleine didn't win the first race, but did sail past two all-male crews. Gordon went on to become the recipient of the highest honor of the Pacific Inter-Club Yachting Association: the 2001 Yachtsman of the Year.
James M. Gere
James M. Gere, civil engineer and founder of Stanford's Blume Earthquake Engineering Center
Gere was known for his outgoing manner, his teaching in and out of the classroom, his athleticism and his skill in civil engineering. "He was, without a doubt, the finest engineer and professor and mentor and adviser any student or faculty member ever had, period," said Haresh Shah, a student of Gere's who became a Stanford professor of engineering and retired in 1998.
Gere and Shah founded the Blume Earthquake Engineering Center in 1974, and they co-directed it until 1986. Gere also became the founding head in 1980 of the Stanford Committee on Earthquake Preparedness, which urged campus members to brace and strengthen office equipment, furniture and other things that could pose a hazard if the ground shook.
Gere contributed to civil engineering and earthquake research with a stream of articles and technical papers. He wrote nine books on engineering, and mathematical theory and applications. He co-authored a well-known text, Mechanics of Materials, in 1972 and was the sole author of later editions. Shah called this "the most popular book used by everyone in the world who is a mechanical or civil engineer."
Gere was not only a pioneer on paper—he and Shah were among the first foreigners to travel in 1980 to Tangshan, China, to study the devastating aftermath left by the major earthquake that shook the region in 1976.
Gere came to Stanford as a doctoral student in 1952, when he was awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship. The university offered him a faculty spot in 1954, after he completed his doctorate in applied mechanics, and Gere began his 34-year career of engaging his students and pioneering earthquake technology. From 1960 to 1970, he was associate dean of the School of Engineering, and from 1967 to 1972, he served as chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering. He retired from Stanford in 1988.
Gere's track record at Stanford wasn't just academic, but literal—he was an avid runner, and he helped to form a running group for university members, affectionately called "The Angell
Field Ancients," because Gere and his founding colleagues liked to poke fun at their age. The group gained popularity over the years, and graduate students, faculty and staff joined the pack. He tackled the Boston Marathon in 1973, at age 48, finishing in three hours and 13 minutes.
He also hiked frequently, sometimes 50 miles a day, and regularly visited Yosemite and the Grand Canyon national parks. He took students, colleagues and loved ones out into the wilderness and shared his knowledge of geology and the outdoors. Shah recalls that some people called Gere "the ranger," because he hiked skillfully and spouted facts with a park ranger's acumen, often wearing a brimmed ranger hat. His wanderlust and boundless energy took him to Mount Everest in 1986, where he and Shah hiked to the base camp.
Gere was born June 14, 1925, in Syracuse, N.Y. He joined the Army Air Corps at 17 and worked as a bombsight mechanic for three years. He earned undergraduate and master's degrees in civil engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1949 and 1951, respectively. He worked as an instructor and later as a research associate for Rensselaer between 1949 and 1952.
Gere married his high school sweetheart, Janice Platt, in June 1946, and they were married 61 years at the time of his death.
He is survived by his wife and their three children: daughter Susan and sons William and David; grandchildren Clifford and Rachel Gere of Hollister and Dewitt Durham of Palo Alto; and his brothers Frederick of Roseville and William of Cheshire.
Services will be held Saturday, Feb. 23, at 2 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Palo Alto, 1985 Louis Road, at Embarcadero Road, where Gere and his wife became members in 1952 and where Gere was deacon in the 1960s.
Hayley Rutger is a science-writing intern at the Stanford News Service.
Donald P. Coduto
Donald P. Coduto is currently a professor of geotechnical engineering and chair of the Civil Engineering Department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He earned a BS in civil engineering from California Stat Polytechnic University, Pomona, an MS in geotechnical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MBA from Claremont Graduate University. He is an ASCE Fellow, a licensed civil engineer and a licensed geotechnical engineer, and has worked on a variety of geotechnical projects for both private and public sector clients.
R. C. Hibbeler
Russ Hibbeler graduated from the University of Illinois-Urbana with a B.S. in Civil Engineering (major in structures) and an M.S. in Nuclear Engineering. He obtained his Ph.D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Northwestern University. Hibbeler's professional experience includes postdoctoral work in reactor safety and analysis at Argonne National Laboratory, and structural work at Chicago Bridge and Iron, Sargent and Lundy, Tucson. He has practiced engineering in Ohio, New York, and Louisiana. He has taught at the University of Illinois-Urbana, Youngstown State University, Illinois Institute of Technology, and Union College. Hibbeler currently teaches at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.
Tom Paulay
Emeritus Professor Tom Paulay
On Friday 26th June New Zealand lost one of its most eminent structural engineers
with the death of Professor Tom Paulay. During his 28 years with the Department of
Civil Engineering Tom had a profound world-wide influence on the design of
engineering structures to resist earthquake excitation. His work has also been a major
contributor to the international standing of the Department of Civil Engineering in the
field of earthquake engineering.
Tom was born in Sopron, Hungary, on the 26th May 1923 and he was initially
destined for a life in the Royal Hungarian Army. After attending a boarding school for
military cadets in Sopron he entered the Royal Hungarian Military Academy in Budapest.
On graduation he was posted as a second lieutenant to the same cavalry regiment in
which his father served for many years.
In 1944 he faced the advancing Russian army in the Prypet Marshes in what was
then known as Eastern Poland. At the age of 21, after mounting casualties, he found
himself in command of 278 men and 308 horses. Much action and wounds received in
Poland, and later in Hungary, resulted in many months spent in various military hospitals
and left him somewhat deaf. This partial deafness is remembered by both students and
colleagues.
After he was discharged from the army in 1946 he, with many other returned
servicemen, joined the 300 students in the first year of civil engineering at the Technical
University of Budapest. Tom described lectures in the bombed out ruins of the university
with the lecturers writing on the blackboards whilst wearing knitted gloves and two
raincoats to keep out the cold. The student accommodation was no warmer. The harsh
economic conditions, and the reduced immediate demand for engineers, resulted in a 75%
failure rate in the first year. In 1948, after Stalin and the Red Army imposed total control
over Hungarian society, Tom was one of the few students to escape from Hungary to
Austria and West Germany.
In West Germany he enrolled at the Technical University of Munich, which, after
the allied bombing during the war, was in an even worse state that the Technical
University of Budapest. The lack of financial resources soon terminated his attempt to
continue his studies in civil engineering. In November 1948 Tom returned to Austria to
see the girl that he had met on his initial escape from Hungary. One year later Tom and
Herta were married. Tom spent 3 years in Germany as a stateless refugee working with a
charitable organization.
In 1951 Tom, Herta and daughter Dorothy were granted a scholarship by a group
of Catholic students at Victoria University in Wellington to come to New Zealand. On
September 11 1951 Tom started working as a maintenance labourer in Oamaru. Tom
described his job as a labourer as a wonderful educational experience. Although he was
already learning English, this was where he was first exposed to the rich Kiwi vocabulary
of His Majesty’s English, as practised by the railway labourers. Fifty years to the day
they went back to Oamaru to celebrate but the event was somewhat overtaken by other
happenings in New York.
Tom resumed his studies in civil engineering as a third year student in 1952 at the
University of Canterbury under the guidance of Professor Harry Hopkins. Structural
engineering, and particularly design, interested him most in his studies. It was noted that
the final 14 day examination project chosen by Tom was to design a reinforced concrete
shell roof, a subject not covered in the syllabus for civil engineering. On completing his
studies in 1954 Tom joined the consulting engineering practice of Don Bruce-Smith
where he worked for the next eight years designing many reinforced concrete buildings.
In 1961 he was invited by Harry Hopkins to apply for a lecturer position in the
Department of Civil Engineering to teach structural design. Tom initially told his classes
that the courses would be taught in Hungarian but with a very strong New Zealand accent.
Tom’s afternoon 3 hour design classes started with a one to one and half hour lecture,
followed by time in the drawing office. The lectures were intense, a 4 sheets of finely
written foolscap notes could be taken during that time. The afternoons were usually an
hour to an hour and a half longer than scheduled and sometimes rolled over to Saturdays
as well. Tom is remembered for his enthusiasm and practical knowledge of structural
design, his interest in the welfare of the students and the injection of recent research
findings and ideas. This helped build up an interest in seismic engineering and it had a
major influence on design practice in New Zealand. Even 20 years after he retired some
of the final year design afternoons are still referred to as ‘the Tom Paulay afternoons’.
Tom quickly picked up the research aspects of structural engineering and during
his time he supervised and co-supervised 16 Ph.D students and 26 M.E students. In
1969 Tom completed his own Ph.D on the Coupling of Shear-Walls under the
supervision of Harry Hopkins. His interest in the behaviour of structural walls continued
for many years and his concept of diagonally reinforced coupling beams has become a
standard solution for obtaining a good ductile structure.
He also became interested in the concepts of Capacity Design and his work in
using the analogy of a chain where the design chose the selected weak ductile link,
usually the beams in a multi-storey frames, where the ductile behaviour would take place
in a major earthquake and all other links, the columns, joints and foundations, would be
sufficiently strong that only the chosen members would yield. The designer would tell the
building how to deform. This concept of the weak beam-strong column became the
design norm for buildings in New Zealand and many other earthquake prone countries.
His 1975 book with Professor Bob Park “Reinforced Concrete Structures’ became the
seminal work on capacity design. Tom also recognised the power of modern computer
analysis to extend the work in the laboratory and many M.E. students over the next few
years carried out a large amount of research to determine the over-strength factors
required to ensure that undesirable soft-storey failures would not occur in a major
earthquake. His work on structural walls resulted in the book “Design of Reinforced
Concrete and Masonry Buildings” in 1992 with Professor Nigel Priestley again brought
the latest research findings into the design world. Tom was promoted with a Personal
Chair in Civil Engineering in 1975 as recognition of his contribution to research and
teaching.
Tom retired from the Department of Civil Engineering in January1989 and
became an Emeritus Professor. He continued his research interests and to help supervise
post-graduate students, being present in the department for most afternoons until about
2006. Herta’s declining health meant that he spent more time at home. Herta’s death in
2007 hit Tom very hard. However, he still kept in touch with his former colleagues in the
department and always had that cheerful outlook that was part of Tom.
Tom was involved with the New Zealand Society of Earthquake Engineers and
was President for a term. He served on many New Zealand Building Code committees
and also on many American Concrete Institute committees. He was elected a Fellow of
the Royal Society and served as President of the International Association for earthquake
Engineering from 1992 to 1996. He received an OBE in 1986 and he has Honorary
Doctorates from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich in 1988, the Technical
University of Budapest in 1990, the Technical University of Bucharest in 1996 and the
National University of Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina in 1999. He has received too many
awards and honours to list here.
At the 14th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Beijing in October
2008 Tom was named as one the Legends in Earthquake Engineering. Being included as
one of the greatest names in earthquake engineering was a great honour for Tom and
earthquake engineering in New Zealand.
Tom is survived by his daughters Dorothy and Esther and son Gregory, and six
grand-children. He will be very much missed by the many thousand civil engineers in
New Zealand and overseas who have benefited from his great teaching. The effects of his
work in design approaches in earthquake engineering will continue long into the future.
His colleagues in the Department of Civil and Natural Resources Engineering will also
miss his cheery smile and that sense of humour which seemed to infect all around him.
Athol Carr