Carl Turkstra (PhD ’63, civil engineering) died May 22 after a distinguished career as an academic who transformed building codes followed by one as a successful business owner.
When Turkstra joined the Faculty’s newly launched PhD program in the late 1950s, building codes aimed to achieve absolute safety.
Turkstra proposed a radical alternative in his doctoral research work: apply risk analysis instead.
Doug Wright, then the dean of Waterloo Engineering, ensured Turkstra’s resulting thesis landed on all the right desks, paving the way to an illustrious academic career that spanned three countries and two decades.
Turkstra, who was awarded the Faculty’s first doctorate, twice earned the American Society of Civil Engineering’s State of the Art Award, helped to transform building codes around the world and developed what is now known as Turkstra’s Rule for load construction in structural design.
Read Remembering Engineering's first PhD graduate for full story.