Another giant in our profession has passed into the heavenlies:
Dr. J. David Rogers passed away on August 23, 2025, surrounded by his family and prepared to meet his Savior and Lord Jesus Christ.
A popular retired Missouri University of Science and Technology (MS&T) professor, David will be remembered for his love of teaching, his wide range of interests and knowledge, as well as his endearing sense of humor.
He was surely one of the greats of geotechinical engineering, and I have featured articles of his on this site, including Engineering Geology in the Civil Engineering Curriculum and Determination Of Earth Pressure Distributions For Large-Scale Retention Structures.
I got to meet him once in 2005 when the History Channel featured the Vulcan #2 hammer at a distributor’s yard in New Jersey. I am also indebted to him for much of the material in my own post Getting to the Bottom of Terzaghi and Peck’s Lateral Earth Pressures for Braced Cuts. In the photo at the top, that’s him at the right being interviewed by the channel. (He spent most of this time talking about Gow and the Chicago caissons, but Vulcan was expanding into marine and other applications.) He was doing what he was a master at: communicating, he was one of our industry’s best in that respect.
He had his own website and you can visit it here.
Memory eternal.
vulcanhammer.net 
Sad News.. I m Civil Engineer from Mauritania West Africa. I never meets Dr Rogers, but my passions for Geotechnical Engineering lead me to know him. His website was a true gold mine with lots of interesting engineering and historicals contents. I learned a lot about the Hoover Dam and California engineering history thanks to his contents. I was such a passionate and generous teacher during his Engineering Geology classes which i viewed on youtube. My deepest condoleances to his loved ones. I will be deeply missed
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