Professor Robert H. Scanlan, elected fellow of the American Academy of Mechanics, joined the Department of Civil Engineering at Johns Hopkins University in 1984 and was a Homewood Professor. Bob died on May 27, 2001, at his home in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. He was 86. Bob had a unique career that covered a broad spectrum of mechanics, aerodynamics, and acoustics, with a principal focus on aeroelasticity and wind engineering in the U.S. and abroad, and in academe, government and industry.

Born in Chicago in 1914, Robert Scanlan received undergraduate and graduate degrees in mathematics and physics from the University of Chicago and MIT. During the Second World War he served the country as an aeronautical engineer, becoming the Chief of Aeroelasticity at Republic Aviation in New York. After the war, he worked for the Federal Aviation Administration, followed by a professorship at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His work and research in aeronautics and aeroelasticity led to publication of the book Aircraft Vibration and Flutter, a classic text in the theory of aeroelasticity. He was one of the founders of that then-new field.

After a second doctoral degree in mechanics at the Sorbonne, he served at CNRS and ONERA in France, and then returned to the U.S. where he worked for Schlumberger, followed by faculty positions at Case Institute of Technology, Princeton, and Johns Hopkins. In his time at Princeton and Johns Hopkins, he developed his second major career emphasis, wind engineering. His prior experience in aeronautics led to the development of the field of aerodynamics and aeroelasticity of large civil engineering structures, such as high-rise buildings, cooling towers and long-span bridges, work which he continued actively until his death. He quickly rose to be recognized as one of the leaders of wind engineering. His book Wind Effects on Structures (co-authored with former student Emil Simiu) is widely recognized as a key reference in the field.

For his research, he received numerous awards, prizes and citations from his peers. Among them are the James Croes Medal, the Nathan Newmark Medal, the von Karman Medal and the Wellington Prize of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Methods he pioneered for the analysis of long-span bridges under wind loading are now in common use among researchers and practitioners around the world. He served in leadership roles on technical committees of the American Society of Civil Engineers (of which he was an Honorary Member), was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and an elected fellow of the American Academy of Mechanics. He recently served as principal aerodynamic consultant on a number of monumental long-span bridges around the world including the new San Francisco?Oakland Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge (retrofit), and the Kap Shui Mun Bridge in Hong Kong.

Bob Scanlan served throughout his career as an exemplary scholar, engineer, teacher, adviser, mentor, friend and role model for dozens of undergraduate and graduate students, and for his colleagues. He is survived by his wife Elizabeth, daughters Kate Budlong of Los Angeles and Jean Sachs of Frankfurt, Germany, sons Robert Scanlan of Boston and Glenn Scanlan of Hartford, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.


Nicholas P. Jones
Professor and Chair
Department of Civil Engineering
Johns Hopkins University
3400 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218-2686 USA
410-516-7874; 410-516-7473 FAX; nick@jhu.edu

Comments and Suggestions to mech1@clifton.mech.northwestern.edu