Eminent Structural Engineer: Dr C. Allin Cornell (1938-2007)

C. (Carl) Allin Cornell 69 (Fig. 1), died on December 14, 2007 after a two-year battle with cancer. Stanford University, where he was on the faculty until he passed away, called him "the father of modern earthquake risk analysis" (Stanford Report, December 20, 2007). More broadly, he was perhaps the leading expert in the world in structural reliability theory and application, but his work touched on wide areas of civil engineering including hydrology, geotechnology and transportation, and he influenced a generation of workers in those fields.