James K. Mitchell

James Kenneth Mitchell (born April 19, 1930 in Manchester (New Hampshire) ) is an American civil engineer specializing in geotechnical engineering.

Mitchell studied at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Bachelor 1951) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where he made his master's degree in 1953 and received his doctorate in 1956. After two years of conscription in the US Army (where he was also stationed in Germany) he went to the University of California, Berkeley in 1958 , where he became professor of civil engineering and from 1979 to 1984 head of the Faculty of Civil Engineering. In 1993 he retired and became a professor at Virginia Tech in 1994 , from 1999 as University Distinguished Professor Emeritus.

His research areas include basic research in soil mechanics, soil improvement, soil behavior during earthquakes, environmental geotechnics, and in-situ measurements. Mitchell wrote a US soil mechanics textbook and had over 75 PhD students. He wrote (or was co-author of) over 350 scientific publications.

He received the Norman Medal twice (1972, 1995), the Walter L. Huber Research Award and three times the Thomas A. Middlebrooks Award of the ASCE . He received the US Army Corps of Engineers' Outstanding Service Award in 1999, the Department of the Army's Outstanding Civil Service Medal, and NASA's Medal of Exceptional Scientific Achievement (he was involved in the Apollo missions in predicting driving behavior on the Lunar soil and the conception of sampling). He was Vice President of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering (ISSMFE) from 1989 to 1994. He was chairman of the US Liaison Office to ISSMFE and the Civil Engineering Section of the National Academy of Engineering . He is an honorary member of the ASCE. In 1998 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences .

Mitchell was Terzaghi Lecturer (1984, and he received the Terzaghi Award ), Buchanan Lecturer (1995), Casagrande Lecturer (1993) and Rankine Lecturer (1991, Conduction phenomena - from theory to geotechnical practice , Geotechnique, Volume 41, 1991, p. 299-340).

Fonts

• Mitchell, Kenichi Soga Fundamentals of Soil Behavior , Wiley, 3rd edition 2005 (1st edition 1976 as sole author)
• IM Idriss (Ed.) Selected geotechnical papers of James K. Mitchell , ASCE, Reston, Virginia 2001
• Mitchell Soil improvement state of the art report , 10. ICSMFE 1981, Stockholm, Vol. 4, pp. 509-565
• Mitchell, Wan Electroosmotic Consolidation of Soils , Journal Geotechn. Closely. ASCE, Vol. 102, 1976, p. 473

Web links

• Biography on the occasion of the Davies Medal des Rensselaer Polytechnic