Obituary

Egor Popov

25 April 2001 |

Egor Popov
Emeritus Professor of Civil Engineering Egor Popov, widely heralded as a trailblazer in his profession, died April 19 at Alta Bates Medical Center, following a heart attack. He was 88.

A leader in the field of structural engineering whose studies were applied to the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the trans-Alaska Pipeline, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and numerous other projects, Popov authored engineering textbooks that became academic classics around the world. He was active in research and lecturing nationally and internationally up until his death.

Popov was born in Kiev, Russia, in 1913. He and his family escaped to Manchuria during the Bolshevik Revolution and eventually sailed to America. He earned his doctorate in civil engineering and applied mechanics from Stanford in 1946.

After joining the Berkeley faculty in 1946, Popov introduced graduate mechanics courses into the civil engineering curriculum and was largely responsible for creating a division of structural engineering and structural mechanics within the civil engineering department. He served as the division’s first chair and directed the Structural Engineering Laboratories.

He retired in 1983, and since 1996 he has been a Professor in the Graduate School.

Popov’s research had strong theoretical and experimental underpinnings, yet was applied broadly by structural engineers. Much of more recent work focused on the seismic response of reinforced concrete and steel structures.

Popov’s many awards included election to the National Academy of Engineering, the campus’s Distinguished Teaching Award, the ASCE Normal Medal, the Berkeley Citation, a Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award, and the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s Housner Medal. In 1977, Popov’s colleagues, in cooperation with the NSF, organized a conference in honor of his 30 years of teaching.

Popov is survived by a brother, Nicholas Popov of Santa Rosa; a daughter, Katherine Crabtree of Medford, Ore.; a son, Alexander Popov of Carbondale, Ill.; and six grandchildren.

Memorial services were held this week at St. John’s Russian Orthodox Church in Berkeley. The family prefers donations to the American Heart Association or a charity of choice.