The nation’s leading expert on the vibration design of buildings, Thomas M. Murray, PhD, died August 29 at the age of 84.
Murray, an emeritus professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va., was well known for his expertise on steel connections, floor system serviceability, pre-engineered building design, and light-gauge design, but his place among the highest pantheon of steel researchers was secured by his foundational work on vibration design, including his plainly titled paper “Building Floor Vibrations,” for which he won the American Institute of Steel Construction’s 1991 T.R. Higgins Lectureship Award.
Murray was also one of the authors of AISC Design Guide 11: Vibrations of Steel-Framed Structural Systems Due to Human Activity, which is one of AISC’s most widely accessed technical resources, and a perennially popular lecturer on the subject.
“Tom’s involvement, contribution, and legacy are extremely broad and significant in AISC’s technical resources over the last four decades,” said Charles J. Carter, SE, PE, PhD, AISC's president. “He was always thinking, and he always contributed a practical solution to our discussions. We'll all miss his wisdom and talent--and the quick wit he'd use to help us get past an impasse.”
Murray joined Virginia Tech’s faculty in 1987 after 17 years at the University of Oklahoma. At Virginia Tech, he was named the Montague-Betts Professor of Structural Steel Design and in 2006 he received the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia. He also served on the AISC Specification and Manual Committees and the Connection Prequalification Review Committee. In 2007, he received the AISC Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2010 he was presented the prestigious AISC Geerhard Haaijer Award for Excellence in Education, which at the time had only been presented five times previously. In 2002, Murray was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and in 2012 he became a Distinguished Member of ASCE.
“Tom Murray was an icon in the steel community,” said W. Samuel Easterling, PhD, a longtime Virginia Tech colleague who is now the dean of engineering at Iowa State University. “His passing is a great loss to the profession, but an even greater loss to those of us who knew him as a colleague, mentor, or friend. It is difficult for me to process that someone who has meant so much to me personally for nearly 40 years is no longer here to talk, provide advice, or just enjoy each other’s company. I will miss him dearly.”
Murray started his engineering career in 1962 after graduating from Iowa State University. He later earned a master’s in civil engineering at Lehigh University and a PhD in engineering mechanics at the University of Kansas. Early in his career at Virginia Tech, he led the development of an experimental research laboratory and within two years, it became the fifth largest structural engineering research laboratory in the nation. In 2002, the lab was renamed the Thomas M. Murray Structural Engineering Laboratory in his honor.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better teacher, mentor, and friend than Dr. Murray,” said Brad Davis, SE, PhD, an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Kentucky and a former student and collaborator of Murray’s. “When I first had him as a professor in 1992, his class was on a completely different level, and that hooked me on structural engineering. In his research, he poured countless hours into developing graduate students to get their careers off to a good start. His research was unique because it provided direct guidance for real-life problems. Dr. Murray’s knack for explaining technical material was simply the best.”
During his career, Murray was involved in more than 130 research projects, many with an emphasis on floor serviceability. He authored or co-authored more than 200 books, design guides, and papers and supervised around 150 grad student theses and dissertations. Many of his papers can be found in AISC’s Engineering Journal and Modern Steel Construction archives, and nearly a dozen of his lectures are available at learning.aisc.org.
“Tom was more than a mentor to me,” said Mark Holland, PE, chief engineer at AISC full-member fabricator Paxton and Vierling Steel in Omaha. “I owe my career to Tom. He got me my first job, trained me to think like an engineer, and was everything a mentor needed to be. His ability to explain complex problems in ways people of different levels of technology knowledge could understand set him apart from most other academics. Tom was also my friend. I will miss him personally and, along with the rest of the steel industry, professionally.”
Funeral services for Murray will be at St. Jude Catholic Church, Radford, Va., on October 5th at 11:00 a.m. Visitation begins at 10:00 a.m. and interment and reception are to follow. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the MPN Research Foundation.