John Robert Booker, AO, B.Sc., Ph.D., D.Eng., FIEAust., FAA
✍ Scribed by Carter, John; Desai, Chandra S.; Kerry Rowe, R.
- Book ID
- 101220616
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1999
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 29 KB
- Volume
- 23
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0363-9061
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
was widely regarded as one of the "nest researchers of his generation working in the "eld of theoretical geomechanics. It was his supreme skill in devising rigorous theoretical solutions to many important but di$cult practical problems that distinguished his work, and also for many years underpinned the research of the geotechnical group at the University of Sydney, Australia. His solutions to these problems were both elegant and accessible; they are used widely in engineering practice.
Throughout his career, John produced a large and important body of research published in over 250 technical papers. He authored and co-authored many seminal papers in the "elds of soil mechanics, foundation engineering and environmental geomechanics. His major interests included development and application of analytical and computer solutions to bearing capacity problems, soil}structure interaction, consolidation, creep, thermomechanical behaviour of soil and rock, and contaminant transport in soil and fractured rock. He was a co-author of the in#uential book on &&Clayey Barrier Systems for Waste Disposal Facilities''. He was awarded a higher doctorate (D.Eng.) in 1983 for his &&Selected Papers on Analytic Geomechanics''.
The excellence of John's work was recognized in a variety of important ways, both nationally and internationally. He received many prestigious awards and distinctions, including the Medal for Distinguished Contributions to Geomechanics, awarded by the International Association of Computer Methods and Advances in Geomechanics in 1994, and an invitation to present the E. H. Davis Memorial Lecture to the Australian Geomechanics Society in 1995. In recognition of his outstanding research in geomechanics, he was granted a most exclusive Australian Research Council Special Investigator Award in 1995. In the same year he was also elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science*another very rare achievement for an engineering academic. In 1997 John was appointed an O$cer of the Order of Australia for his lifelong services to geomechanics and education, a particular distinction that was unexpected by this private man of genuine modesty. While regarded as one of the pre-eminent academic researchers in civil engineering, John's advice on many practical engineering problems was often sought by the engineering profession.