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MORROUGH PARKER O'BRIEN
1 902-1 988
BY RICHARD G. FOLSOM AND
ROBERT L. WIEGEL
M ORROUGH PARKER O BRIEN, dean emeritus of the Col-
lege of Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, an
engineering educator of renown, founder of modern coastal
engineering, and consultant on a wide variety of vital engi-
neering projects, died July IS, 198S, at his home in Cuernavaca,
Mexico, at age eighty-five. He is survived by his wife, Mary,
of Cuernavaca; a son, Morrough, of Boulder, Colorado; and
a daughter, Sheila, of Berkeley, California.
Mike, as he was known to close acquaintances, was a dynamic and
powerful person. He enjoyed tackling problems and getting things
done through hard work. He did not shrink from making decisions,
and once made, he did his best to implement them. He was consci-
entious and always thoughtful in his approach, but persevering. His
interests were broad and his knowledge pervasive. One of his most
important characteristics was always looking ahead trying to foresee
what was to occur. (University of California: In Memorzam, 1988, Aca-
demic Senate.)
He foresaw the coming changes in engineering from a
largely descriptive approach to an analytical basis and pro-
ceeded to guide the Berkeley and national education programs
in this direction. He was also alert to the importance and
difficulties of effective technology transfer from research
to practical application. Many of his ideas, and details on
265
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266
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
how he implemented them, are given in the 312-page printed
version of his oral history, Morrough P. O'Brien: Dean of the
College of Engineering, Pioneer in Coastal Engineering, and Consultant
to General Electric, An Oral History Conducted 1986-~8 by Marilyn
Ziebarth, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Librarv.
University of California at Berkeley, 1988.
Mike was born September 2l, 1902, in Hammond, Indiana.
He completed high school in Toledo, Ohio, and after some
starting college studies entered the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology at Cambridge, Massachusetts, receiving his
B.S. in civil engineering in 1925. After two years of graduate
work at Purdue University, he was the John R. Freeman
Scholar of the American Society of Civil Engineers for study
of fluid mechanic subjects in Germany and Sweden.
Throughout his career he kept on the "cutting edge" of
engineering and science by extensive self-study.
Mike always combined his considerable faculties for teaching,
research, and professional engineering for mutual enhance-
ment of achievements. His academic base was the College
of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley,
from his appointment as assistant professor of mechanical
· · · ~ _
,,
engineering in l uXS to his recognition at retirement in
1959 as the dean emeritus of the College of Engineering.
He received his professorship in 1936, serving as chairman
of mechanical engineering from 1937 to 1943, followed bv
.
D _ ~1_ _ 1 ___ 1_ _ , · ~ . -
·_—— ~ ~ ~ Lit ~~ _ : ~ ~ _ ~ · _ _ ~ · . ~ ~ ~ ~
sixteen years as dean of the college. During his years at
Berkeley, the national ratings of excellence for the college
increased from good to outstanding. This was recognized
uy ~~= c;, ~~ awaralng nlm tne LL.1~. in 1959 and by
the Academic Senate in 1988 with the Clark Kerr Award,
made to "An individual considered to have made an extraor-
dinary and distinguished contribution to the advancement
of higher education." This award was presented to Mike by
Clark Kerr, president emeritus of the University of Califor-
nia. Of his many special assignments within the University,
we consider his dynamic leadership as Academic Senate
chairman during the faculty loyalty oath controversy and as
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MORROUGH PARKER O'BRIEN
267
institutional representative for the University Engineering,
Science, Management War Training Program from 1941
through 1944 to be goocl examples. He was a most capable,
yet clemancling and interesting, classroom teacher as well
as the author or coauthor of over a hundreci published
articles including many on technical subjects and engineering
education, and coauthor of Applied Fluid Mechanics, published
by McGraw Hill in 1937 (one of the first three texts to
present the then new methods of treating flow problems).
The building on the Berkeley campus that houses the Hy-
ciraulic Engineering Laboratory and the Water Resources
Center Archives is named O'Brien Hall in his honor.
While in Berkeley, Mike completed, in a consulting ca-
~ e ~
paclty, many engineering assignments in a W1C he range or
applications, such as pump selection and performance testing,
fluic! meters stanciarcis, propulsion systems for amphibious
tanks (FMC Corporation), regulation of the estuary of the
Columbia River, ancl sand bypassing at the Santa Barbara
Harbor, California (probably the first such application as
the solution to a common problem anc] now in general
use). With the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships, he was concerned
about underwater sound anc! propeller noise, as well as
torpedo design with General Electric Company. He also
participated at Bikini (1946) in "Operation Crossroads."
On leave from the University as director of research anc!
development for more than a year for the Air Reduction
Company (Airco), he worker! with a wicle variety of engineering
technical ancI management problems, establishing the research
and development activities of that company.
Mike was executive engineer of the Radiation Laboratory
uncler Professor Ernest O. Lawrence in 1942-43. O'Brien
was asked by Lawrence anti General Groves, the Manhattan
Project director, to recruit an engineering team to design
the production facilities at Oak Ridge for the electromagnetic
system. He has saici that probably the most important thing
he clic] in his life was to convince them that there was not
time to build a competent staff, and that they should hire
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268
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
companies with an established engineering staff to do the
job.
O'Brien was the founder of modern coastal engineering.
He wrote a number of papers that have had a lasting influence
and encouraged others to work successfully in solving coastal
problems. He was appointed civil engineer for the U.S.
Army Board on Sand Movement and Beach Erosion in 1929,
and initiated this board's research on coastal engineering
by personally conducting field studies on the New Jersey
and Long Island shores. In 1930 he made field studies
along the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California
and wrote a detailed seven-volume report on the results of
his observations. A landmark paper on the relationship
between tidal prisms and entrance areas of natural estuaries
was one of the results of these studies. He summarizer}
many of his early observations in his paper "The Coast of
California as a Beach Erosion Laboratory" (Shore ~ Beach, July
1936~. His work on sand bypassing was mentioned above.
His work in using graphical means of estimating wave refraction
was done a few years later. In 1938 he was appointed a
member of the Beach Erosion Board, U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, and served on it until is was abolished in 1963.
He was then appointed to its successor, the Coastal Engineering
Research Board, serving from 1963 until 197S, a total of
forty years on the two boards.
During World War IT, he worked for the U.S. Navy Bu-
reau of Ships on subjects described above, and he directed
a program of field and laboratory studies of landing craft.
With Professor H. U. Sverdrup of the Scripps Institute of
Oceanography, he also worked on the forecasting of waves.
Examples of his work are given below. The use of dimensionless
parameters relating wind speed, fetch, and wave height and
period were thought of by Mike at that time, and he recom-
mended their use in a memorandum to Sverdrup and Walter
H. Munk; they are still in use today. Around 1950 Mike
conceived of the equation containing both viscous and inertial
terms expressing forces exerted by waves on pile-supported
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MORROUGH PARKER O'BRIEN
269
coastal and offshore structures. The equation, developed
by one of his graduate students A. R. Morison) through
extensive laboratory tests and by others at the University
through field tests, has been used in the analysis of wave
loading of nearly every coastal and offshore structure using
piles, columns, and/or tubular bracings.
Mike and Professor Joe W. Johnson started what are now
known as the International Conferences on Coastal Engineer-
ing. The first was held in Long Beach, California, in 1950;
the most recent, the twenty-first, was held in Torremolinos,
Spain, in 198S, with Mike still active in choosing the more
than 250 papers presented at the conference. He served as
president of the American Shore and Beach Preservation
Association from 1972 through 1983.
After his retirement from the University, Mike made many
visits to the University of Florida during an interval of twenty-
one years; he was very interested in the coastal processes
along the extensive Florida coastline. His close colleague
there, Professor Robert G. Dean, commented on Mike's
continued love for visiting and observing beaches and rais-
ing questions during such a trip that would provide research
topics for several graduate students. During these exchanges
with the students, he would "range out" beyond the limits
previously identified; provide the benefits of his experience
and background on related problems; and infuse the students
with enthusiasm, motivation, and direction. He continued
this activity through his last visit in 1988.
About 1950 Mike began his long-time consulting on technical
and management problems with the General Electric Company,
where he was still active at his death. Although he was
associated with other divisions, his most significant work
was with the Aerospace and Defense Group where the
compressor design for the first American axial-flow jet engine
was laid out exactly in accordance with the method presented
in the paper by O'Brien and Folsom entitled The Design of
Propeller Pumps and Fans. He was elected to the General
Electric Company Propulsion Hall of Fame in 1984.
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
Mike received three honorary degrees: D.Sc., Northwestern
University; D.Eng., Purdue University; and LL.D., University
of California. He was an honorary member and fellow of
the American Society of Civil Engineers and the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers, and elected to honorary
membership in the American Society for Engineering Edu-
cation in 1969 (awarded the Lamme Award in 1968) and
the Japan Society of Civil Engineers in 1988. He was elected
to membership in the National Academy of Engineering in
1969. (Note: In 1956 Mike suggested to the president of
the Engineers' joint Council, Enoch Needles, that a national
academy of engineering might be a good idea. The Making
of the MAE: The First 25 Years, by Lee Edson, National Academy
Press, 1989~. Mike was a member of the National Research
Council's Committee on Engineering Implications of Changes
in Relative Mean Sea Level (198~1987~; the Army Scientific
Advisory Pane} from 1954 to 1965, serving as its chairman
from 1961 to 1965; the Defense Science Board from 1961
to 1965; and the Board of the National Science Foundation
(a presidential appointment) from 1958 to 1960. For his
service to the U.S. government, he was twice awarded the
Distinguished Civilian Service Medal by the Secretary of
the Army.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
oral history
