Engineering Memory of the Month

Remembering and environmental pioneer

The beginning of the 1961 – 62 academic year ushered in a big change at Stanford Engineering. A new professor, Rolf Eliassen arrived to “clean up” the civil engineering department. Eliassen , who had developed MIT’s sanitary engineering program, now would do the same for Stanford.

This month marks the 10^th anniversary of Eliassen’s death. In a memorial resolution passed by the faculty senate to mark his passing, colleagues credited Eliassen as the founder of Stanford’s Environmental Engineering program.

“He founded a new and flexible environmental engineering program that permitted students from a wide range of backgrounds and career goals to obtain a graduate education that met their individual needs,” wrote Professors James Gere, Joseph Franzini, Gilbert Masters and Perry McCarthy.

Eliassen studied sanitary engineering at MIT in the early days of the Great Depression, and by the time he got to Stanford he understood pollution to be a broad and mounting problem. At Stanford, his research addressed a number of diverse problems such as solid waste, air pollution and radioactive waste disposal.

Eliassen was also a very popular teacher, so much so that he packed Memorial Auditorium with an elective class he created, “Man and His Environment,” even through the class began at 8 a.m.

Today the environmental engineering graduate program at Stanford is regarded by some, notably U.S. News and World Report, as the best in the country. His legacy and memory remain strong.

Gather your memorable photos from your school days and take them to the scanner. Then e-mail them to David Orenstein, communications and PR manager, for possible posting.