Robert Park (1933-2004)

The Society records with sadness that Life Member Professor Bob Park passed away on November 3, 2004 at the age of 71 in Christchurch, New Zealand, ending a long and still-active career in the civil engineering and earthquake engineering fields that made him well known around the world.

Bob graduated from the University of Canterbury, and returned in 1965 to join the faculty of the Department of Civil Engineering following his PhD from the University of Bristol. He left a lasting impression on a large number of undergraduate and graduate students. The PhD students whom he advised in particular continue to carry forward his influence, the first of whom was Nigel Priestley, with the total exceeding twenty by the time of his retirement in 1999.

From 1978 to 1992, Bob was Chair of the Civil Engineering Department of the University of Canterbury, and then he filled the role of Deputy Vice-Chancellor from 1993 to 1999. In those positions, while continuing his productive research, he was instrumental in building up the university’s laboratory and other civil engineering resources. Those management contributions were essential to putting the University of Canterbury on the map as one of the world’s pre-eminent sites of earthquake engineering research.

In the field of reinforced concrete structural design, Bob is well known for his voluminous research output (over 150 technical papers) and his classic 1975 textbook, co-authored with his colleague and friend Tom Paulay, Reinforced Concrete Structures. He also co-authored with William Gamble another often-used text, Reinforced Concrete Slabs. He was one of the key people in the creation of the seismic design method called capacity design, a key innovation with regard to reinforced concrete structures and more broadly a notable development in the overall history of earthquake engineering. At the time of his death, Park was active as leader of a committee of the fib (fédération internationale du béton) at work on the task of increasing the unification of the world’s reinforced concrete code procedures.

Although he was a professor rather than a practicing engineer, he was often chosen as the leader of New Zealand engineering committees to study pressing structural design issues, committees which in effect wrote the national building code provisions for earthquake engineering and for reinforced, precast, and prestressed concrete.

His honours in New Zealand include being the first civil engineer in the country to be asked to join the Royal Society of New Zealand, and he was given awards or honorary memberships by the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand, the New Zealand Structural Engineering Society, the New Zealand Concrete Society, and the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering, along with receiving the first Research Medal issued by the University of Canterbury.

Bob’s influence extended internationally via his building code development work and his teaching in Latin America, Europe, Japan, the United States, and Asia. International honours included his membership in the Royal Academy of Engineering in the United Kingdom, and he was made an Officer of the Civil Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE). The status of honorary memberships or medals were conferred on him by the International Association of Earthquake Engineering, the American Concrete Institute, Fédération Internationale de la Precontrainte (FIP), and the worldwide reinforced concrete society, the fib. The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute is in the process of preparing an oral history volume on Bob Park and Tom Paulay that will be jointly published with the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering in 2005.

Bob was the loved husband of Pauline and the late Kathy, and father of Robert, Brendon, Tony, Moira and Jackie.

The New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering salutes Bob’s enormous contribution to earthquake engineering and the Society, and joins with his family in mourning his passing.

(The NZSEE gratefully acknowledges oral history editor Robert Reitherman for the above biography)