Thomas Paulay

Thomas Paulay (born May 26, 1923 in Sopron , † June 28, 2009 in Christchurch ) was a Hungarian-New Zealand civil engineer.

biography

Paulay was a cavalry officer in the Hungarian army during World War II and was wounded several times. He originally studied chemical engineering in Budapest from 1946, but fled to Germany when he was threatened with arrest by the communist administration, where he worked for an aid organization for three years, but was unable to continue his studies. In 1951 he came to New Zealand, where he studied civil engineering in Wellington and at the University of Canterbury and then worked as a consulting engineer in Wellington for eight years. He taught from 1961 at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch and received a chair in 1975. In 1989 he retired, but continued his research for around fifteen years.

Paulay is known for his research on earthquake-proof construction. With Robert Park, he set up modern test laboratories for investigating the seismic behavior of buildings.

In 1986 he became OBE . In 2008 he received the International Award of Merit in Structural Engineering .

In 1957 he became a New Zealand citizen.

Fonts

• with Hugo Bachmann : Capacity measurement of reinforced concrete structural walls under the influence of earthquakes, report Inst.Building and Construction, ETH Zurich, Birkhäuser 1990
• with Hugo Bachmann, Konrad Moser: Earthquake design of reinforced concrete buildings, Birkhäuser 1990
• with MJN Priestley: Seismic design of reinforced concrete and masonry buildings, Wiley 1992
• Simplicity and confidence in seismic design, Wiley 1993 (Mallett-Milne Lecture)
• with Robert Park: Reinforced concrete structures, Wiley 1975

literature

• Obituary by Nigel Priestley, Earthquake Eng. Struct. Dyn., Volume 38, 2009, pp. 1461-464, pdf

Web links

• Reminder page at the University of Canterbury's Quake Center