鲜花( 60) 鸡蛋( 0)
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With Toni, 1 gradually developed the confidence to hold lengthy discussions on aspects of seismic
design philosophy. There is a pure, sharp pleasure in discussing new ideas at the edge of one’s
knowledge with a quick, superior, and receptive mind. In time, our familiarity with each other’s
viewpoints enabled these discussions to be carried out in a kind of verbal shorthand, which was, and
still is, exhilarating. These discussions shaped the direction of my research for the remainder of my
academic career.
Before I left for the University of California a t San Diego in 1986, Tom and I had started preliminary
discussions about a design text to act as an extension to Reiilforced Cone-ete Stmctiwes, which
had been published in 1975, just before I returned to Canterbury to join the faculty. We worked on
this for the next five years. Because of the physical separation between Canterbury and San Diego,
it was essential, particularly in the final stages, to get together and resolve minor differences. I recall
in particular a two-week period in 1990 when Tom and Herta stayed with Jan and me in the southern
California Sierras as we knocked the book into shape, as the most enjoyable, and intellectually
profitable technical experience of my life. My responsibility was largely to translate Tom’s Hungarian/
Germanic sentence structure into English, but I learned a huge amount from the contact with
Tom a t this time-not just technically, but also about intellectual rigour in presentation of material.
Tom, Bob, and myself are separated in age by almost exact multiples of ten years (e.g., 80, 70, 60)
give or take a few months, and we developed a habit of celebrating our cumulative age (e.g., 204)
when possible, by a dinner with our wives. The exact date on which this should occur was debated
on technical terms-should it be a simple arithmetic mean of the dates, or should they be weighted
by the individual age? I’m not clear that this weighty problem was ever resolved, despite the assistance
of many a glass of wine.
By 1999, I was spending more time back in New Zealand, and was there when Bob had his stroke
and heart attack, which cost him several more of his nine lives. He was not expected to survive, but
not only did he do so, he managed to resume both his technical and international committee work,
despite constraints imposed by partial paralysis of his left side, and advice by doctors and his wife
against international travel. This activity continued until his untimely death in 2004.
Tom has also continued to be active technically, and some of his finest work has been published in
the past five years: simple, elegant, and of great significance. It is the sort of work that makes one
think, “That’s so obvious, why did no one see that before?!” To produce such work a t any stage of |
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