Robert H. Scanlan

Robert H. Scanlan (* 1914 in Chicago, † 27 May 2001, Lawrenceville, New Jersey ) was an American engineer of Aeronautics and wind loads in Civil Engineering.

Scanlan studied mathematics at the University of Chicago to the master's degree and received his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Mathematics and Physics. During World War II he worked for Republic Aviation in New York as an engineer for aeroelasticity. After the war he was in the air traffic authority ( Federal Aviation Administration ) and then at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. From his studies of vibrations in aircraft a book that has become a standard work was created. Then he went to the Sorbonne, where he received his doctorate in mechanics, worked at Schlumberger, the Case Institute of Technology ( where he was involved until 1966 at the initial stage of development of dynamic pile tests with George G. Goble ), Princeton University, and from 1984 at Johns Hopkins University, where Homewood Professor was. At Princeton, and at Johns Hopkins, he made his second field a name, the behavior of large building structures ( such as bridges, cooling towers, skyscrapers ) under wind loads. Also, he wrote a book about it, which became a standard work. He advised on several major bridge projects such as the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, the Kap Shui Mun Bridge in Hong Kong.

He received the James Croes Medal, the Nathan M. Newmark Medal, the Von Karman Medal and the Wellington Prize of the American Society of Civil Engineers ( ASCE ). He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Mechanics.

He was married, had two sons and two daughters.

Writings

• Robert Rosenbaum Introduction to the study of Aircraft Vibration and Flutter, New York, Macmillan 1951, Dover 1968
• With Emil Simiu: Wind effects on large structures: fundamentals and applications to design, 3rd edition, Wiley 1996, Dover 2008 ( first in 1978 as wind effects on structures: an introduction to wind engineering)
• K. Yusuf Billah, Robert H. Scanlan: Resonance, Tacoma Narrows Bridge failure, and undergraduate physics textbooks. In: American Journal of Physics. 59, No. 2, 1991, pp. 118-124