C. Allin Cornell
1938-Dec. 14, 2007
Stanford, California

C. Allin Cornell, 69, a Stanford professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering, died of cancer Dec. 14.

He was born in 1938 in Mobridge, S.D. He received three degrees at Stanford: an undergraduate degree in architecture, and a master's and PhD (1964) in civil engineering. He was on the faculty at MIT from 1966 to 1983 before returning to Stanford as a research professor.

With one seminal paper in 1968, "Engineering Seismic Risk Analysis," his mathematical prowess nudged researchers towardquantifying the risks and hazards of earthquakes.

His work dealt with seismic hazards — the probability of a certain degree of ground movement at a particular spot — and seismic risk, usually measured in terms of dollars or lives lost. He advised the U.S. Geological Survey on its seismic hazard maps, which have become guides for a wide variety of users, from prospective homebuyers to urban planners.

His book, "Probability, Statistics, and Decision for Civil Engineers", written with Jack Benjamin and published in 1970, opened up new ways of thinking for an entire generation of civil and structural engineering students.

Cornell's earthquake work led to his being elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, an honor usually bestowed on geophysicists."It's really rare for a card-carrying engineer to get elected to the AGU,'' said Tom Hanks, a geophysicist and earthquake expert at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park.

He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and was the 2003 recipient of the George W. Housner Medal, the highest honor of Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.

In addition to his building-safety work, Cornell was known for studying the risk to offshore oil platforms from earthquakes, strong winds and waves. He also was a consultant to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and officials there had sought his advice in recent years as Washington considered a resurgence of nuclear power, said his colleague, Professor Anne Kiremidjian.

"He just loved working on new and different problems. He loved his family, he loved music, he loved to talk about politics," she said.

His wife, Elisabeth Pat?-Cornell, is a professor in management science and engineering at Stanford and shares similar research interests. They have two children, Phillip and Ariane Cornell. He also has three children from an earlier marriage, Robert Cornell, Joan Fazzio and Stanford graduate Eric Cornell, who won the 2001 Nobel Prize for physics.

In addition to his wife and children, he is survived by two sisters, Joan Scheel of Santa Rosa, Calif., and Bonnie Bassinger of Edna, Minn.

Tags: teacher/educator