Ben C. Gerwick

Ben Clifford Gerwick Jr. (born February 22, 1919 in Berkeley (California) , † December 25, 2006 ) was an American civil engineer and professor at the University of California, Berkeley .

Gerwick attended Berkeley High School with the degree in 1935 and studied civil engineering at the University of Berkeley with a bachelor's degree in 1940. During World War II he served in the US Navy in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and South Pacific until 1946, most recently as a commander. Then he went back as an engineer to the family company Ben C. Gerwick Inc., a construction company for marine structures. In 1952 he became president of the company. From 1971 he was professor of civil engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He retired there in 1989, but continued teaching as needed.

He specialized in marine constructions such as bridge foundations, port structures and offshore structures. He developed innovations in the underwater concrete used, in prestressed concrete, in corrosion protection, in deep foundations (e.g. prestressed concrete piles), floating concrete structures up to offshore platforms in arctic waters or in the harsh environment of the North Sea. He also developed pre-stressed concrete rail shafts for railways (used, for example, by the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in San Francisco). Partly he worked as a consulting engineer and he worked worldwide. His projects include the Richmond – San Rafael Bridge and the San Mateo – Hayward Bridge in the San Francisco Bay area.

He wrote over 240 articles and five books, including a standard work on offshore constructions.

He taught an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving in structural engineering in the marine area, where he required his student groups to present project solutions to him in a manner similar to that of a client.

In 1958 he became President of the Prestressed Concrete Institute. In 1976 he received the Golden Beaver Award for Engineering (the highest award for structural engineering in the western United States), in 1979 the Emil Mörsch commemorative coin and in 1989 the Berkeley Citation. In 1982 he received the Freyssinet Medal of the FIP (International Society for Prestressed Concrete) and in 1990 was elected a member of the Berkeley Fellows. 1972 to 1976 he was President of the FIP. In 1974 he became a member of the National Academy of Engineering . In 2001 he received the OPAL Award from ASCE in the construction area.

Fonts

• The bridge beyond, Vantage Press 2005 (autobiographical)
• Construction of marine and offshore structures, CRC Press 2007

Web links

• Keith Crandall, Robert Bea, Robert Wiegel, University of California obituary