Alexander Scordelis

Alexander Costicas Scordelis (born September 27, 1923 in San Francisco , † August 27, 2007 in Berkeley ) was an American civil engineer.

Scordelis was the son of Greek immigrants who owned a small grocery store in the Marina District of San Francisco. Scordelis graduated from Galileo High School at age 16 and studied civil engineering at the University of California, Berkeley . Since he belonged to the ROTC Reserve, he was drafted in World War II and was a pioneer officer (most recently captain) of the engineering division of the 84th Infantry Division, took part in the Battle of the Bulge and received high awards such as the Purple Heart. He continued his studies after the war, graduating from Berkeley with a bachelor's degree in 1948 and a master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . In 1949 he became an instructor, 1951 assistant professor, 1957 associate professor and 1962 professor at Berkeley. From 1987 until his retirement in 1990 he was Byron L. and Elvira E. Nishkian Professor of Structural Engineering.

In the 1950s he researched prestressed concrete structures, for example for bridges and wide-span shell roofs, partly in collaboration with Tung-Yen Lin , with whom he also worked closely later, and in the late 1950s he developed finite element methods for their analysis, which he up to continued his retirement. He also undertook large-scale tests on box girder bridges.

His projects include the first reinforced concrete offshore platform in Norway, the roof of the Oklahoma State Fair Arena, the Arizona State Fairgrounds Coliseum in Phoenix, the dome of the Garden State Art Center in New Jersey, the St. Mary`s Cathedral in San Francisco and the roof of the San Juan Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was on the commission of inquiry after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, advised on seismic monitoring of the Golden Gate Bridge and was on the earthquake advisory committee of the California Department of Transportation.

In 1994 he received the Freyssinet Medal and he received the Berkeley Citation. He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and an honorary member of the American Concrete Institute and the American Society of Civil Engineers , whose Moisseiff Award he won three times.

Web links

• Karl S. Pister et al., Berkeley obituary