Professor Joe Penzien, 1924 - 2011

Elected in 2008 as one of the Legends of Earthquake Engineering, Professor Penzien died this week in California.

Prof. Penzien spent 35 years as Professor of Structural Engineering of the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Civil Engineering specializing in the areas of dynamics of structures and earthquake engineering. He was the founding Director of the University's Earthquake Engineering Research Center (EERC — now known as the PEER Center) having responsibility for its research and laboratory development programs, including design of the earthquake simulator (shaking table) facility at the UCB Richmond Field Station. After retirement in 1988 he started International Civil Engineering Consultants (which is now a Division of Paul C. Rizzo Associates, Inc.) in 1990 along with Wen S. Tseng.

He guided the development of numerous computer programs, including Computer Programs HASSI-1 through HASSI-8 for evaluating three-dimensional soil-structure interaction effects.

Joe chaired the Steering Committee for the Eighth World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in 1984 in San Francisco. He co-authored with Ray Clough, Dynamics of Structures (McGraw-Hill 1975) a landmark that has been translated into Bahasa Indonesia, Chinese, Greek, French, Japanese, and Russian.

Professor Hong Hao was the last PhD student of Joe Penzien before he retired in 1988. I met him occasionally after I left Berkeley in early 1990, after working for Bruce Bolt as a postdoctoral fellow. Both Penzien and Bolt gave me strong support, and always wrote excellent recommendations for me. I felt very sad about the news. The last time I met Penzien was in 2008 at the WCEE in Beijing. He looked healthy and in fact better than he had in the early 1980’s. One morning I walked with him shortly. He told me that at 84 he felt better than when he was in his 60’s because he did not need to worry about work and the professional service. He walked 2 to 3 hours almost everyday.

Penzien made enormous contributions in modern earthquake engineering, and was highly respected in the earthquake engineering community. He was a real gentleman, very kind not only to his students, but also to everybody he knew. I am really honored to be his student.
  
He had a long and full career and will be sadly missed by friends and family and all the students now scattered around the world whose lives and careers he influenced.