Thomas Paulay Emeritus Professor of Civil Engineering University of Canterbury (1923–2009)
✍ Scribed by Nigel Priestley
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2009
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 62 KB
- Volume
- 38
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0098-8847
- DOI
- 10.1002/eqe.963
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Professor Tom Paulay, one of the great names in earthquake engineering of the 20th century, died in Christchurch on 28 June 2009 at the age of 86, after a year long struggle with cancer. He was one of a handful of people around the world who have shaped the art and science of seismic design to the form it now has. His international status was recognized last year by the International Association of Earthquake Engineering with his election as a 'Legend of Earthquake Engineering.'
Tom was born in Sopron, Hungary, in a military family, on 26 May 1923. He was educated in a military academy, and fought with distinction as a cavalry officer in the Hungarian army against the Russians in World War 2, as his father had in the First World War. He met Herta, the Austrian woman who later became his wife, while helping find accommodation for a band of refugees and wounded soldiers (he himself had just been released from hospital having been wounded for the third time) a few days after the war ended.
Following the war, in 1946, he enrolled in the Department of Civil Engineering of the Technical University of Budapest. In 1948, having been labeled as a security threat, and slated for arrest by the communist authorities, he escaped, with great difficulty and danger from Hungary to West Germany, where he worked for 3 years for a charitable organization, being unable to complete his university studies. During this period, he married Herta.