Farewell

Alex Becker died in December at the age of 89. He was a professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering. His research focused on electromagnetic sensors and systems for subsurface mineral, petroleum, geothermal, groundwater and environmental characterization. A Polish Holocaust survivor, he immigrated to Montreal after World War II and later received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from McGill University before working as a postdoc at the Centre de Recherche Géophysique in France. Following a faculty appointment at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, he joined UC Berkeley’s Department of Materials Science and Mineral Engineering and later moved to the GeoSystems Engineering group within the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He also served as a faculty senior scientist at Berkeley Lab, where he published numerous papers on near-surface electromagnetic systems for unexploded ordnance detection.

Robert Brayton died in January at the age of 91. He was a professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer sciences and a pioneer in logic synthesis and formal verification. His career spanned multiple decades, including 26 years at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, where he led the Yorktown silicon compiler team and helped create one of the most advanced logic synthesis systems of its time. There, he also co-developed the sparse tableau methodology, which remains a foundational technique in modern circuit simulation. Brayton later joined the faculty at UC Berkeley, where he co-authored numerous influential papers and books and helped develop multilevel logic synthesis, which is widely used in the design and verification of complex logic systems and is a core component of Electronic Design Automation (EDA).

Michael Clancy died in December at the age of 75. He was a teaching professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer sciences. Clancy joined UC Berkeley as a lecturer in 1977, where he taught nearly every mainstream computer science course and played a pivotal role in developing and teaching pedagogy courses for first-time teaching assistants. He also was an early innovator in online learning environments for programming and contributed significantly to the design of self-paced courses, impacting countless students over the years. In addition to his teaching, Clancy was deeply involved in the U.S. computer science education community and the emerging field of psychology of programming research, helping to shape the way programming is taught and understood.

Richard Goodman (Ph.D.’64 MSE and Mineral Engineering) died in March at the age of 90. He was a professor emeritus of geological engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Known for his seminal contributions in the areas of engineering geology and rock mechanics, Goodman developed the “Goodman Jack,” a tool for in-situ measurement of rock properties. In addition, he developed a base friction machine that furthered our understanding of kinematics and failure modes in fractured rock. A devoted teacher and prolific author, he mentored 39 Ph.D. students and published five books and more than 200 technical articles over the course of his career. Among his many honors, he was a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Carl Monismith (B.S.’50, M.S.’54 CE) died in January at the age of 98. He was a professor emeritus of civil engineering and director emeritus of the UC Berkeley Pavement Research Center within the Institute of Transportation Studies. He joined the faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in 1951 and became known as a pioneer in the development of modern pavement structural design and the understanding of asphalt materials. A dedicated teacher and researcher, he advised 37 doctoral students and authored nearly 500 papers. Throughout his career, he held leadership positions in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and was a founding member of the International Society for Asphalt Pavements. Among his many distinctions, he was inducted into the UC Berkeley Civil and Environmental Engineering Academy of Distinguished Alumni, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Engineering.

OTHER ALUMNI

Doug Abbott (B.S.’67, M.S.’71 EECS)

Collin Amick (MEng ’76 MSE and Mineral Engineering; M.S.’76, Ph.D.’04 CEE)

Jane Marie Andersen (M.S.’82 CE)

William Bridges (B.S.’56, M.S.’57, Ph.D.’62 EECS)

Victor Chinn (B.S.’56 IEOR)

Frank Collins (Ph.D.’68 ME)

Edward Dodge (B.S.’66 EECS)

Neil Eskind (M.S.’62 NE)

Robert Fifield (B.S.’54 EECS)

Robert Gassin (B.S.’60 IEOR)

William Gerberich (Ph.D.’71 MSE and Mineral Engineering)

Gerald Graebe (B.S.’58 CE)

Richard Greif (B.S.’57 ME)

Carl Gronlund (B.S.’57 EECS)

Lynn Hunton Jr. (B.S.’41 ME)

Richard Karn (B.S.’50 CE)

Lynn Kuluva (M.S.’66 EECS)

John Leach (B.S.’59 CE)

Irving Lev (B.S.’48 ME)

Stanley Lucas (B.S.’62 ME)

Thomas Mack (B.S.’63, M.S.’64 ME)

Lauren Moriarty (B.S.’75 EECS)

John Nady (M.S.’68 EECS)

Thomas Osborne (M.S.’61 EECS)

Earl Rhue (B.S.’81 EECS)

Frederick Rish (M.S.’53 CE)

Ivan Roenigk (B.S.’56 CE)

Eric Scott (B.S.’71, M.S.’72 CE)

Barry Show (B.S.’71, M.S.’72 EECS)

Jerald Albert Smith (B.S.’67 EECS)

A.R. Frank Wazzan (M.S.’61, Ph.D.’63 ME)

Philip Weiss (B.S.’10 EECS)

Elliot Zais (B.S.’66 Petroleum Engineering)