EERI Oral History Series, Vol. 24, Edward L. Wilson
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Edward L. Wilson Robert Reitherman, Interviewer with an Appendix on R a y W. Clough Stanley Scott, Interviewer Edward L. Wilson Edward L. Wilson Robert Reitherman, Interviewer Earthquake Engineering Research Institute Editor: Pam McElroy Composition: George Mattingly, Berkeley, California, www.mattinglydesign.com Book design: Laura Moger, Moorpark, California, www.lauramoger.com Copyright © 2016 by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute The publication of this book was supported by FEMA/U.S. Department of Homeland Security under grant EMW-2015-CA-00203-A03. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the oral history subject and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute or FEMA/U.S. Department of Homeland Security. All rights reserved. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. No part may be reproduced, quoted, or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the executive director of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. Requests for permission to quote for publication should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. Published by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute 499 14th Street, Suite 220 Oakland, California 94612-1934 Tel: (510) 451-0905 Fax: (510) 451-5411 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://www.eeri.org EERI Publication Number: OHS-24 ISBN: 978-1-932884-68-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wilson, Edward L., 1931– interviewee. | Clough, Ray W., 1920– interviewee. | Reitherman, Robert, 1950- interviewer. | Scott, Stanley, 1921–2002, interviewer. | Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, issuing body. Title: Edward L. Wilson, with an appendix on Ray W. Clough / Robert Reitherman and Stanley Scott, interviewers. Description: Oakland, California : Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, 2016. | Series: Connections : The EERI oral history series ; 24 | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016046249 | ISBN 9781932884685 (pbk.) Subjects: LCSH: Wilson, Edward L., 1931 — Interviews. | Clough, Ray W., 1920 — Interviews. | Civil engineers — United States — Interviews. | Earthquake engineering—United States—History. Classification: LCC TA140.W545 A5 2016 | DDC 624.1/762 — dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016046249 Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 Table of Contents The EERI Oral History Series . vii Foreword. .xi Personal Introduction . xiii Chapter 1 Growing Up Near Ferndale . 1 Chapter 2 Moving to Sacramento . 9 Chapter 3 An Undergraduate Civil Engineering Student at Berkeley . 13 Chapter 4 In the Army in Korea . 21 Chapter 5 Working for a Master of Science Degree . 27 Chapter 6 Model Studies of Oroville Dam . 35 Chapter 7 1959 to 1963 Working with Professor Ray Clough . 45 Chapter 8 Aerospace Engineer at Aerojet . 57 Chapter 9 Back to Berkeley, on the Faculty . 69 Chapter 10 The Evolution of SAP, NONSAP, and TABS Programs, 1972–1979 . 91 Chapter 11 The Transition from Main Frame Computers to Personal Computers. 101 Chapter 12 A Conversation with Ashraf Habibullah and Ed Wilson . 109 Chapter 13 Review Boards . 123 Chapter 14 Retirement and Time to Think . 127 vii Publications of Edward L. Wilson . 133 Edward L. Wilson Photographs . 147 Appendix: Ray W. Clough . 167 Personal Introduction . 167 Chapter 1 Early life in the Pacific Northwest . 171 Chapter 2 Mountain Climbing and the Ptarmigan Traverse . 175 Chapter 3 Early Education and the University of Washington . 179 Chapter 4 The War Comes . 183 Chapter 5 Graduate Study at MIT . 187 Chapter 6 Joining the Faculty at U.C. Berkeley . 189 Chapter 7 Development of the Finite Element Method . 197 Chapter 8 Berkeley’s Field Testing Program . 203 Chapter 9 Creation of the Earthquake Engineering Research Center . 207 Doctoral Students of Ray W. Clough . 211 Publications of Ray W. Clough . 213 Ray W. Clough Photographs . 229 Index . 237 The EERI Oral History Series This is the twenty-fourth volume in the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s Connections: The EERI Oral History Series. EERI began this series to preserve the recollections of some of those who have had pioneering careers in the field of earthquake engineering. Significant, even revolutionary, changes have occurred in earthquake engineering since individuals first began thinking in modern, scientific ways about how to protect construction and society from earthquakes. The Connections series helps document this important history. Connections is a vehicle for transmitting the fascinating accounts of individuals who were present at the beginning of important developments in the field, documenting sometimes little-known facts about this history, and recording their impressions, judgments, and expe- riences from a personal standpoint. These reminiscences are themselves a vital contribu- tion to our understanding of where our current state of knowledge came from and how the overall goal of reducing earthquake losses has been advanced. The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, incorporated in 1948 as a nonprofit organization to provide an institu- tional base for the then-young field of earthquake engineering, is proud to help tell the story of the development of earthquake engineering through the Connections series. EERI has grown from a few dozen individuals in a field that lacked any significant research funding to an organization with nearly 3,000 members. It is still devoted to its original goal of investi- gating the effects of destructive earthquakes and publishing the results through its recon- naissance report series. EERI brings researchers and practitioners together to exchange information at its annual meetings and, via a now-extensive calendar of conferences and workshops, provides a forum through which individuals and organizations of various disci- plinary backgrounds can work together for increased seismic safety. The EERI oral history program was initiated by Stanley Scott (1921-2002). The first nine volumes were published during his lifetime, and manuscripts and interview transcripts he left to EERI are resulting in the publication of other volumes for which he is being posthumously credited. In addition, the Oral History Committee is including further ix interviewees within the program’s scope, following the Committee’s charge to include subjects who: 1) have made an outstanding career-long contribution to earthquake engineering; 2) have valuable first-person accounts to offer concerning the history of earthquake engineering; and 3) whose backgrounds, considering the series as a whole, appropriately span the various disciplines that are included in the field of earthquake engineering. Scott’s work, which he began in 1984, summed to hundreds of hours of taped interview sessions and thousands of pages of transcripts. Were it not for him, valuable facts and recollections would already have been lost. Scott was a research political scientist at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He was active in developing seismic safety policy for many years and was a member of the California Seismic Safety Commission from 1975 to 1993. For his contribution to the field, he received the Alfred E. Alquist Award from the Earthquake Safety Foundation in 1990. Scott received assistance in formulating his oral history plans from Willa Baum, Director of the University of California, Berkeley Regional Oral History Office, a division of the Ban- croft Library. An unfunded interview project on earthquake engineering and seismic safety was approved, and Scott was encouraged to proceed. Following his retirement from the university in 1989, Scott continued the oral history project. For a time, some expenses were paid by a small grant from the National Science Foundation, but Scott did most of the work pro bono. This work included not only the obvious effort of preparing for and conducting the interviews themselves, but also the more time-consuming tasks of reviewing transcripts and editing the manuscripts to flow smoothly. The Connections oral history series presents a selection of senior individuals in earthquake engineering who were present at the beginning of the modern era of that field. The term “earthquake engineering” as used here has the same meaning as in the name of EERI—the broadly construed set of disciplines, including geosciences and social sciences as well as engineering itself, that together form a related body of knowledge and collection of indi- viduals that revolve around the subject of earthquakes. The events described in these oral histories span many kinds of activities: research, design projects, public policy and broad social aspects, and education, as well as interesting personal aspects of the subjects’ lives. x Published volumes in Connections: The EERI Oral History Series Henry J. Degenkolb. 1994 John A. Blume . 1994 Michael V. Pregnoff and John E. Rinne . 1996 George W. Housner. 1997 William W. Moore . 1998 Robert E. Wallace . 1999 Nicholas F. Forell . 2000 Henry J. Brunnier and Charles De Maria . .2001 Egor P. Popov . 2001 Clarence R. Allen . 2002 Joseph Penzien. 2004 Robert Park and Thomas Paulay . 2006 Clarkson W. Pinkham . 2006 Joseph P. Nicoletti . 2006 LeRoy Crandall . .2008 Vitelmo V. Bertero . 2009 Robert V. Whitman . 2009 Eric Elsesser