AMERICAN HISTORY BOOKS PLUS

“He was a true scholar in every sense of the word, who brought a renaissance flavor to his work,” Wiesner said. Petroski was particularly adept at translating engineering concepts and communicating them widely, said Mark Wiesner, a former chair of the civil and environmental engineering department. “They demonstrate how failure is an integral part of the process and not necessarily something that should be excused and forgotten.” “Even if my books focus on different topics - like bridges or pencils or toothpicks - their general objective is to elucidate the nature of invention and engineering,” Petroski said. His most recent book was “Force: What It Means to Push and Pull, Slip and Grip, Start and Stop” (Yale University Press, 2022), which explores the ongoing physical interaction between people and things that enables them to stay put or causes them to move. He also wrote regular columns for the magazines American Scientist and ASEE Prism. These books were his first to gain critical acclaim and commercial success, launching a prolific writing career featuring 20 general interest books and countless general-interest articles and essays for magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal. When things don’t work, they fail, and inventors and engineers look for ways to improve them. In them, Petroski refutes that form follows function, and instead claims that form follows failure. Petroski’s third book, “The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance,” and fourth book, “The Evolution of Useful Things,” do just that. “Even if my books focus on different topics-like bridges or pencils or toothpicks-their general objective is to elucidate the nature of invention and engineering,” he said. In his books, Henry Petroski attempted to explain the world using engineering concepts. The book focused on large structures like bridges and buildings, but Petroski believed the concept could be applied to small things such as paper clips, zippers and pencils. “Henry exemplified Duke’s unique ability to beautifully integrate the traditions of the liberal arts and engineering to unearth deep insights into how engineering has transformed our world for the better,” Lynch said.įive years later, Petroski published his first book, “To Engineer is Human,” in an effort to answer in straightforward language the fundamental question, “What is engineering?” His answer: Engineering is design, and design is about avoiding failure, which is nonetheless an essential part of the process. This was a perfect match, said current Pratt School of Engineering Dean Jerome Lynch.

AMERICAN HISTORY BOOKS PLUS

“They saw them as a plus and not a dilution of my technical work.” “I came to Duke University because the people who interviewed me were actually interested in my non-technical publications,” said Petroski, who joined the school’s faculty as a professor of civil and environmental engineering and history in 1980.

Increasingly asked to write longer and longer pieces, Petroski sought a position at a university where he might have more time to focus on that side of his career. It was during his time at Argonne that he began publishing pithy 600- to 700-word pieces about science and technology policy in MIT’s Technology Review, as well as op-eds in the New York Times. After graduate school, Petroski taught engineering at the University of Texas at Austin until 1974 and then joined Argonne National Laboratory as a leader of its research and development efforts in fracture mechanics. He found joy, for example, in the puzzle-like nature of expressing ideas in the 14 lines of prescribed patterns of meter and rhyme demanded by sonnets. After an assignment for a literature course landed in his school’s literary magazine, he began writing formal poetry and short essays as a way to relax at night. While earning his technical degrees, Petroski discovered a penchant for writing. He then quickly earned master’s and doctoral degrees in theoretical and applied mechanics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 19, respectively. He was 81.īorn in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Park Slope and Cambria Heights, Queens, Petroski turned his curiosity about the origins of the structures and objects around him into a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Manhattan College in 1963. Henry Petroski, a longtime professor at Duke University who seamlessly intertwined loves of engineering, history and writing, died June 14. Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

American history books