Henry Petroski

Professor Henry Petroski was the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and Professor of History at Duke University. Before coming to Duke in 1980, he taught at the University of Illinois and the University of Texas at Austin and was a group leader at Argonne National Laboratory, where he was responsible for research and development efforts in fracture mechanics. He was a professional engineer registered in Texas, and a chartered engineer registered in Ireland. From 2004 through 2012 he held a Presidential appointment as a member of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. He had authority on invention, design, and the failure of structures and wrote about house building, bridges, pencils, paper clips, toothpicks, books and bookshelves, engineering errors, and delivering newspapers as a boy. His latst book concerned the history and future of America’s infrastructure. Professor Petroski is was a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Engineers of Ireland, and was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.