Henry Petroski

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Henry Petroski bigraphy, stories - Professor and Author

Henry Petroski : biography

February 6, 1942 –

Henry Petroski (February 6, 1942) is an American engineer specializing in failure analysis. A professor both of civil engineering and history at Duke University, he is also a prolific author. Petroski has written over a dozen books – beginning with To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design (1985) and including a number of titles detailing the industrial design history of common, everyday objects, such as pencils, paper clips, and silverware. He is a frequent lecturer and a columnist for the magazines American Scientist and Prism. His most recently published book is To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure.

Works

Books

  • To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design (1985), ISBN 978-0-679-73416-1
  • Beyond Engineering: Essays and Other Attempts to Figure without Equations (1986), ISBN 978-0-312-07785-3
  • The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance (1990), ISBN 978-0-679-73415-4
  • The Evolution of Useful Things (1992), ISBN 978-0-679-74039-1
  • Design Paradigms: Case Histories of Error and Judgment in Engineering (1994), ISBN 978-0-521-46649-3
  • Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and The Spanning of America (1995), ISBN 978-0-679-76021-4
  • Invention by Design: How Engineers Get from Thought to Thing (1996), ISBN 978-0-674-46368-4
  • Remaking the World: Adventures in Engineering (1997), ISBN 978-0-375-70024-8
  • The Book on the Bookshelf (1999), ISBN 978-0-375-70639-4
  • Paperboy: Confessions of a Future engineer (2002), ISBN 978-0-375-71898-4
  • Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design (2003), ISBN 978-1-4000-3293-8
  • Pushing the Limits: New Adventures in Engineering (2004), ISBN 978-1-4000-3294-5
  • Success Through Failure: The Paradox of Design. (2006), ISBN 978-0-691-13642-4
  • The Toothpick: Technology and Culture. (2007), ISBN 978-0-307-27943-9
  • The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems. (2010), ISBN 978-0-307-27245-4
  • The Engineer’s Alphabet: Gleanings from the Softer Side of a Profession. (2011), ISBN 978-1-107-01506-7
  • To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure. (2012), ISBN 978-0-674-06584-0

Recent Articles

  • "Engineering: Scientific Status," in Modern Scientific Evidence, 2002, vol. 3, part 3, pp. 14–54.
  • "The Origins, Founding, and Early Years of the American Society of Civil Engineers: A Case Study in Successful Failure Analysis," in American Civil Engineering History: The Pioneering Years, B. G. Dennis, Jr., et al., editors, Proceedings of the Fourth National Congress on Civil Engineering History and Heritage, ASCE Annual Meeting, November 2–6, 2002, pp. 57–66.
  • The Importance of Engineering History," International Engineering History and Heritage: Improving Bridges to ASCE’s 150th Anniversary, Jerry R. Rogers and Augustine J. Fredrich, editors. History Congress proceedings, American Society of Civil Engineers, Houston, Texas, October 2001, pp. 1-7.
  • "Reference Guide on Engineering Practice and Methods," in Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, 2nd edition, Washington, D.C.: Federal Judicial Center, 2000. pp. 577–624.
  • "The Britannia Tubular Bridge: A Paradigm of Failure-Driven Design," reprinted in Structural and Civil Engineering Design, William Addis, ed. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1999, pp. 313–324.
  • "Polishing the Gem: A First-Year Design Project," Journal of Engineering Education, October 1998, pp. 445–449.
  • , Slate Magazine, Posted Monday, March 15, 2004, at 11:36 AM ET.
  • , Slate Magazine, Posted Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007, at 4:28 PM ET.
  • "Infrastructure," American Scientist, September–October 2009, pp. 370–374.
  • "Bridging the Gap," New York Times Magazine, June 14, 2009, pp. 11–12.
  • "Want to Engineer Real Change? Don’t Ask a Scientist," Washington Post, Outlook Section, January 25, 2009, p. B4.
  • "Calder as Artist-Engineer: Vectors, Velocities," in Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926–1933, ed. Joan Simon and Brigitte Leal (New York, Paris, and New Haven: Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Pompidou, and Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 178–183.
  • "The Importance of Civil Engineering History," Proceedings, International Civil Engineering History Symposium, Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, Toronto, June 2–4, 2005, pp. 3–8.
  • "The Evolution of Useful Things: Success through Failure," Proceedings of the Design History Society Conference on Design and Evolution, Delft, The Netherlands, August 3-September 2, 2006. In CD format.
  • "An American Perspective on Telford," The 250th Anniversary of the Birth of Thomas Telford: Collected Papers from a Commemorative Conference Held on 2 July 2007, Royal Society of Edinburgh, pp. 44–46.
  • "Foot in Mouth: The Toothpick’s Surprising Debt to the Shoe," Huntington Frontiers, Spring/Summer 2007, pp. 22–24.
  • "What’s in a Nametag?" American Scientist, July–August 2007, pp. 304–308.
  • "The Paradox of Failure," Los Angeles Times, August 4, 2007, p. A17.
  • "Success and Failure: Two Faces of Design," The Bent of Tau Beta Pi, Fall 2007, pp. 27–30.
  • "Picky, Picky, Picky," Los Angeles Times, October 30, 2007, p. A23.
  • "The Glorious Toothpick," The American, November/December 2007, pp. 76–80.