KARL S. PISTER (1925-2022)

BY JACK P. MOEHLE, ARMEN DER
KIUREGHIAN, AND ROBERT L. TAYLOR

KARL STARK PISTER was an international authority on structural mechanics and earthquake engineering, a founding father in the field of computational mechanics, and a pioneer in using computers to analyze buildings, bridges, and other structures. Over more than 70 years of devoted service to the University of California, he held roles as a professor and dean of engineering at UC Berkeley, chancellor at UC Santa Cruz, and vice president for educational outreach for the UC system.

The son of two high school teachers, Karl was born to Edwin Leroy and Mary Kimball Smith Pister in Stockton, California, on June 27, 1925. Along with his younger brother, Phil, he grew up exploring 320 acres — and a family home that had stood since the mid-1880s. He graduated as valedictorian of his high school class in 1942 and spent the summer working as an engineering aide for the Division of Highways before entering UC Berkeley. There, he earned his B.S. in civil engineering in 1945. After graduating from college and enlisting as an apprentice seaman in the Navy, he was assigned to Okinawa during the final year of World War II. Following the war’s conclusion, he returned to Berkeley for graduate studies in the fall semester of 1946 and earned an M.S. in civil engineering in 1948. That same year, he began doctoral studies in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign under the advisement of Henry Langhaar, earning his Ph.D. in 1952. He joined the faculty in the UC Berkeley Department of Civil Engineering later that year.

Karl’s doctoral research explored using curvilinear coordinates to solve plane elasticity problems. Upon returning to UC Berkeley, he turned his attention to the mechanical properties of structural concrete, working alongside future National Academy of Engineering (NAE) members Alex Scordelis (1978), T.Y. Lin (1967), and Boris Bresler (1979). His collaboration with Bresler on concrete strength under combined stresses culminated in a paper that earned the Wason Medal for Materials Research from the American Concrete Institute in 1960. In the 1950s, Karl also studied torpedo net behavior with Ray W. Clough Jr. (1968), and colleagues, conducting physical tests in the San Francisco Bay, where some unarmed torpedoes reportedly missed the nets and washed up on the shores of Marin County.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, much of the research done by Karl and his graduate students (affectionately known as the PRM: the Pister Research Machine) focused on modeling the behavior of solid propellant rockets. Their research included studies on laminated composite plates and shells, thermo-viscoelastic modeling of shells and propellants, and finite deformation mechanics contributing to the foundation of what is now known as computational mechanics. His work on consistent linearization and treatment of constitutive materials became seminal contributions to the field. Between 1980 and 1984, Karl co-chaired a National Research Council Committee on Computational Mechanics with Melvin L. Baron (NAE 1978). Beginning in the 1980s, he transitioned toward researching the probabilistic and optimal design of earthquake-resistant structures — an area he pursued while moving into administrative positions at Berkeley and Santa Cruz.

Coupled with his teaching and research, Karl emerged as a leader in university governance. He chaired UC Berkeley’s Division of Structural Engineering and Structural Mechanics (1970-73) and served as dean of the College of Engineering (1980-90). During his decade as dean, he championed interdisciplinary collaboration in emerging fields such as manufacturing, environmental engineering, energy, and computing; he expanded facilities for microelectronics and computer-aided design; and he led planning and fundraising for Soda Hall, a new building devoted to Berkeley’s lauded computer science program. Also working to strengthen ties between alumni and industry, he helped grow a nascent fundraising effort into a major $30 million philanthropic gift program in the College of Engineering. Following his tenure as dean, he was appointed the sixth chancellor of UC Santa Cruz (1991-96), later serving as vice president for educational outreach at the UC Office of the President (1999-2000).

Beyond the University of California, Karl played a significant role in founding the American University of Armenia (AUA), an affiliate of UC located in Yerevan, Armenia. He traveled to Armenia in 1990 as a part of a UC delegation assessing the feasibility of establishing an American-style university in what was then a Soviet republic. After AUA’s establishment in 1991, he served as a founding member of its board of trustees and later as treasurer, and chair of the Finance Committee. He was instrumental in AUA becoming the first university outside the U.S. to gain accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. He served on the board of AUA for 27 years.

Karl was a steadfast advocate for educational access. After the passage of California’s Proposition 209, which prohibited public institutions from considering race, ethnicity, or sex in hiring and admissions, he championed educational outreach programs for underrepresented students. Under his leadership, the UC system set up a comprehensive network of collaborations with low-performing schools to broadly improve educational outcomes.

In addition to his academic leadership, Karl held an array of public service positions. He served on boards for the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, the National Research Council’s Board on Engineering Education, the California Council for Science and Technology, UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education, and the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He was also not only a member of the board of the Graduate Theological Union — a multidenominational consortium of seminaries and centers for theological studies — but also a regent of the Franciscan School of Theology.

For his work, Karl received numerous honors throughout his career. Elected as a member of the NAE in 1980, he was also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Mechanics, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was an honorary fellow of the California Academy of Sciences and an honorary member of the International Association for Computational Mechanics. His accolades included the Berkeley Medal, the Berkeley Citation, the Clark Kerr Award, the Presidential Medal of the University of California, and UC Berkeley’s 2006 Alumnus of the Year award. The American Society for Engineering Education awarded him both the Vincent Bendix Award for Minorities in Engineering and the Lamme Medal — the highest honor bestowed by the society — for his contributions to engineering education.

Meeting Rita Olsen in 1947 while working on his master’s degree at Berkeley, they married in 1950 in Oakland. The couple moved to Illinois where Karl completed his doctoral studies before returning to California in 1952, settling in Lafayette, where they raised six children — two sons and four daughters. After 60 years of marriage, Rita passed away in 2011. Karl died on May 14, 2022, at age 96. At the time of his passing, he was survived by his brother, Phil; six children; ten grandchildren; and a great-grandson.