In a ceremony held on October 28 at the University of Minnesota, AISC dedicated the 2022 edition of its Specification for Structural Steel Buildings (ANSI/AISC 360) to longtime volunteer and structural behavior research pioneer Theodore (Ted) V. Galambos. This dedication honors Galambos’ service on the AISC Committee on Specifications and several of its Task Committees since 1956. His pivotal research and publications on the load and resistance factor design (LRFD) method transformed the AISC Specification, which was most recently updated in 2016.
“As a professor, Ted is a beloved teacher who instructed many future engineers in steel design with an exemplary blending of theory and practice,” said Cynthia Duncan, senior director of engineering at AISC. “Ted’s commitment to sharing his knowledge, his willingness to mentor several generations of young researchers, and his strong ethical standards have made him one of the giants of his generation. His contributions on the behavior of steel structures will have a lasting impact on the structural engineering profession.”
Galambos, professor emeritus of the University of Minnesota’s Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo-Engineering, has been known as the “father of LRFD” ever since his groundbreaking research led to the introduction of LRFD in the 1986 AISC Specification. Among his numerous professional honors are the 1981 AISC T.R. Higgins Lectureship Award and the 1999 AISC Geerhard Haaijer Award for Excellence in Education. He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
After receiving his doctorate from Lehigh University in 1959, Galambos stayed on as a research assistant professor, focusing his attention on the stability behavior and design of steel beam columns and multistory steel frames. In 1965, he moved to Washington University in St. Louis, where he became the first holder of the Harold D. Jolley Professorship in Civil Engineering and served as department chair from 1970 to 1978. It was during this time that Galambos began his research of LRFD in structures. In 1981, Galambos joined the University of Minnesota, where he was appointed the James L. Record Professor of Civil Engineering. He retired from the University of Minnesota in 1997.
The dedication ceremony for Galambos followed the seminar “Getting Up-to-Date with the 2022 AISC Specification for Structural Steel Buildings,” led by Duncan and James O. Malley, chief operating officer and senior principal of Degenkolb and chair of the AISC Committee on Specifications. In addition to Duncan and Malley, Jerome Hajjar and Roberto Leon, both members of the AISC Committee on Specifications, also shared their honors for Galambos.
“We want to thank Ted for everything that he has done for us and for nurturing entire generations of students and also researchers in steel design and construction,” said Leon, D.H. Burrows Professor of Construction Engineering at Virginia Tech.
“We have all celebrated Ted periodically over the years,” said Hajjar, CDM Smith Professor and Department Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University. “We keep celebrating Ted, not just for his great technical contributions, which have been so profound, but because of how he showed us a path to be a great person, a great humanitarian. You have taught us all so much about just how to live life and how to love life, and how to love our profession.”
Jerome Hajjar and Roberto Leon share their honors for Galambos.
As part of the dedication, the University of Minnesota and event sponsor LeJeune Steel Company, an AISC member fabricator, raised more than $3,000 for the Theodore V. Galambos Scholarship Fund, which will support an endowed program for the University of Minnesota Department of Civil Engineering's Theodore V. Galambos Structural Engineering Laboratory.
Galambos thanked AISC and the attendees for the honor, and he drew attention to his family members in attendance, three of whom followed his lead in becoming civil engineers and one a welder.
“I think it shows that they looked and me and said, ‘Look, this guy is having fun,’” he said. “I appreciate and really value AISC, and I had a good time with so many good people.”
Ted Galambos addresses the ceremony attendees.