Remembering Dr. Henry Petroski

TBP is saddened to share that Henry Petroski, P.E., Ph.D., NY X ’63, professor of engineering at Duke University, prolific author, and a valued contributor to The Bent of Tau Beta Pi magazine for many years, passed away on 6/14/2023, at the age of 81.

An esteemed professor of civil and environmental engineering at Duke University, Dr. Petroski developed his own personal principle inspired by the architectural phrase “form follows function.” His principle, “form follows failure,” has been extensively discussed in numerous publications, including books, lectures, scholarly journals, The New York Times, Forbes, and American Scientist. Dr. Petroski not only enjoyed writing about engineering, but also found pleasure in composing formal poetry as a means of unwinding in the evenings and became known as “America’s poet laureate of technology.” In 2003, he was initiated as an eminent engineer by the New York Xi Chapter of TBP at Manhattan College.

He taught engineering at the University of Texas at Austin for six years before joining the Argonne National Laboratory, working in the reactor analysis and safety division. In 1980, he began instructing at Duke, using the flexibility in his teaching schedule to write about engineering in layman’s terms. Dr. Petroski was a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a distinguished member of the ASCE, and a fellow of the ASME, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Institution of Engineers of Ireland, and received the Washington Award from the Western Society of Engineers.

Dr. Petroski wrote more than a dozen books between 1985 and 2022, including: To Engineer is Human (1985), The Pencil (1990), The Toothpick (2007), The Road Taken: The History and Future of America’s Infrastructure (2016), and his final book, Force: What it Means to Push and Pull, Slip and Grip, Start and Stop (2022). From 2007 to 2018, he contributed to The Bent with two excerpts from his books: The Road (Not) Taken and An Engineer’s Alphabet. He also wrote two articles titled Engineers and Scientists: Similarities and Differences and Success and Failure: Two Faces of Design. You can find his Bent feature articles on TBP’s website.

Thank you, Dr. Petroski, for all that you have contributed to the field of engineering. To view his full obituary or to leave a tribute, click here.