Roy E. Olson RIP

Another geotech legend passes on:

Roy was born September 13, 1931 in Richmond, Indiana. He grew up in Minneapolis and attended the University of Minnesota where he received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering. Roy then attended the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, where he earned his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering in 1960. Upon graduation, Roy was hired by the University of Illinois as a faculty member in their Civil Engineering Department. In 1970, he was recruited and hired by the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Texas in Austin. Roy was an accomplished researcher and a favorite professor with the many students he taught over his 42-year career. He was instrumental in bringing national recognition to the Department of Civil Engineering at UT, which is now ranked fourth overall in the United States.

Throughout his career Roy received many awards and held leadership roles in professional societies while actively teaching and mentoring students. Some of Roy’s professional accomplishments include: the Huber Research Prize, the Croes Medal, the Norman Medal, the ASTM Hogentogler Award (twice), and his invitation to deliver the Terzaghi Lecture. In 2003, he was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering. However, to Roy, his greatest accomplishment was seeing the successes of his former students. Many have become well-respected and influential leaders in geotechnical engineering.

Roy’s greatest impact on this site (and its companion vulcanhammer.info) was the Dennis and Olson Method for estimating the axial capacity of driven piles, which he presented with Norman Dennis (later at the University of Arkansas) in 1983. (The proceedings of the conference at which it was presented were edited by Stephen G. Wright, another of Roy’s students.) I taught it in my foundation courses for a good while. An “alpha/beta” method, it was a “state of the art” method when it was first presented, certainly an improvement over the API method. Today, however, I think that pure “beta” methods (like the Fellenius Method, presented here) are the better way to accomplish this. I discuss the way in which methods such as Dennis and Olson can be adapted to be a pure “beta” method and hope that, when beta methods are finally recognised as the best, the Dennis and Olson method can influence their final formulation.

Be that as it may, Roy Olson was another giant in our industry, and his passing is to be lamented.