Carl Allin Cornell (September 19, 1938 – December 14, 2007) was an American

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing i ...

researcher Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness t ...

, and

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professor ...

who made important contributions to reliability theory and

earthquake engineering Earthquake engineering is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering that designs and analyzes structures, such as buildings and bridges, with earthquakes in mind. Its overall goal is to make such structures more resistant to earthquakes. An earth ...

and, along with

Luis Esteva Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archaic ...

, developed the field of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis by publishing the seminal document of the field in 1968.

Biography

Cornell was born in

Mobridge, South Dakota Mobridge also Kȟowákataŋ Otȟúŋwahe ( Lakota: ''Kȟowákataŋ Otȟúŋwahe''; lit. "Over-the-River Town") is a city in Walworth County, South Dakota, United States. The population was 3,261 according to the 2020 census. History Located i ...

in 1938. He received his

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four ye ...

in architecture in 1960 and

M.S. A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

and

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

in civil engineering in 1961 and 1964 respectively, all from Stanford University. He held a professorship at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

from 1964 to 1983, and in 1983 became a research professor at Stanford. He was awarded the Moisseiff Award (1977), two Norman Medals (1983 and 2003), and the Freudenthal Medal (1988), all from the

American Society of Civil Engineers American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

(ASCE). He also received the Harry Fielding Reid Medal of the

Seismological Society of America The Seismological Society of America (SSA) is an international scientific society devoted to the advancement of seismology and the understanding of earthquakes for the benefit of society. Founded in 1906, the society has members throughout the wor ...

, their highest honor (2001) and their William B. Joyner Memorial Lecture award (2005), as well as the

Earthquake Engineering Research Institute The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) is a leading technical society in dissemination of earthquake risk and earthquake engineering research both in the U.S. and globally. EERI members include researchers, geologists, geotechnical e ...

's highest honor, the Housner Medal, in 2003. He was a

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the

American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists and enthusiasts that according to their website includes 130,000 people (not members). AGU's ...

(2002) and member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

(1981). His wife was

Elisabeth Pate-Cornell Marie-Elisabeth Lucienne Paté-Cornell, (born in 1948), is a Stanford University Professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and was the Founding Chair of the Department. Pate-Cornell is an expert in engineering Risk ana ...

, formerly chair of Stanford's Department of Management Science and Engineering, and one of his five children is

Eric Allin Cornell Eric Allin Cornell (born December 19, 1961) is an American physicist who, along with Carl E. Wieman, was able to synthesize the first Bose–Einstein condensate in 1995. For their efforts, Cornell, Wieman, and Wolfgang Ketterle shared the Nobel ...

, Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is best known for his 1968 seminal paper "Engineering Seismic Risk Analysis" that started the field of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis; his work in

reliability Reliability, reliable, or unreliable may refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics Computing * Data reliability (disambiguation), a property of some disk arrays in computer storage * High availability * Reliability (computer networking), ...

especially on second moment methods and reliability-based code calibration, and his development of the probabilistic framework for performance-based earthquake engineering that became the unifying equation of the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center. His 1971 book, ''Probability, Statistics, and Decision for Civil Engineers'' (coauthored with

Jack Benjamin Jack may refer to: Places * Jack, Alabama, US, an unincorporated community * Jack, Missouri, US, an unincorporated community * Jack County, Texas, a county in Texas, USA People and fictional characters * Jack (given name), a male given name, ...

), exposed an entire generation of civil and structural engineering students to the field of probabilistic modeling and

decision analysis Decision analysis (DA) is the discipline comprising the philosophy, methodology, and professional practice necessary to address important decisions in a formal manner. Decision analysis includes many procedures, methods, and tools for identifying, ...

, and remains in use for classroom curriculum to this day. At the quadrennial International Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering, the International Civil Engineering Risk and Reliability Association (CERRA) awards the C. Allin Cornell Award to one individual. In 2009, the award was renamed from the CERRA Award to the C. Allin Cornell Award in honor of its first recipient, and was awarded under its new name in 2011. Cornell received the award in 1987. He died aged 69 at

Stanford University Medical Center Stanford University Medical Center is a medical complex which includes Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children's Health. It is consistently ranked as one of the best hospitals in the United States and serves as a teaching hospital for the S ...

he had been struggling with cancer for two years.

Students

References

External links

* at the

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and s ...

. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cornell, C. Allin Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Stanford University School of Engineering alumni Stanford University School of Engineering faculty 1938 births 2007 deaths Earthquake engineering People from Mobridge, South Dakota Fellows of the American Geophysical Union People from Portola Valley, California

Biography

Students

See also

References

External links