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CARL RICHARD SODERBERG
1895-1979
BY ASC HER
H. SHAPIRO
ON OCTOBER 17, 1979, the full life of C. Richard Soderberg,
Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology, came to an end. He was eighty-four years of age. With roots
in the simple realities of a boyhood in a fishing family on a remote
Swedish island, his qualities of mind and character led him first into
a distinguished industrial career as an engineer in his adopted coun-
try; then, after refusing advancement to a high managerial position,
he went on to an even more illustrious career in education and as a
consultant, and finally to a vigorous professional and intellectual life
in his retirement. His years were marked by an expansive and
seemingly unlimited passion to learn and by a capacity to teach, by a
superb intuitive sense of design and rightness, by an unflagging
breadth of intellectual interest, by a deep understanding of the social
and historical forces set in motion by technology, and by a warmth
and nobility of spirit that endeared him to his colleagues and friends.
C. Richard Soderberg was born on February 3, 1895, in Ulvo-
hamm, Sweden, one of eight children, and grew up on the sea. He
studied with the one teacher of a small, one-room school, but the
future pattern of his intellectual life was even then foreshadowed by
wide reading from books. With assistance from various places, he
went to the technical gymnasium on the mainland and subsequently
to the Chalmers Institute of Technology in Goteborg, where he
graduated as a Naval Architect in 1919. Then, in one of life's fateful
turns, he came to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
267
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
on a fellowship from the American Scandinavian Foundation, where
he earned a bachelor's degree in naval architecture in 1920.
Although his life afterward was centered in the United States, he
never gave up close associations with his homeland.
In 1921 Dick Soderberg married Sigrid Kristina Lofstedt of Bos-
ton, and theirs was a lifelong companionship. He was acutely lonely
when she died in 1975. Their three children are C. Richard Soder-
berg, fir.; Lars O. Soderberg; and Barbro K. (Mrs. Sven O.) Dirke.
Professor Soderberg's career in its several phases marks him as a
towering figure in that transformation of American engineering that
took place during the decades from the 1920s to the 1960s. At the
Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, where he
worked from 1922 to 1938 except for a two-year hiatus at ASEA in
Sweden, he rose in 1933 to the position of Manager of the Turbine
Division. During those years he was involved with various aspects of
power production: railroad electrification, electric motors, and, most
importantly, steam-turbine-driven electric generators. An authority
on the engineering design of steam turbines, he made long-lasting
contributions in two areas of applied mechanics: the dynamics,
vibrations, and balancing of rotating machinery; and the develop-
ment of design criteria for safe working stresses under oscillatory
applied loads.
Professor Soderberg's deep interest in engineering education was
awakened through his activities in the 1920s and 1930s at what was
known as the Westinghouse Design School. This was an in-house
training program for young engineers to enable them to deal with
the demanding problems of steam turbines and electric generators
operating at high speeds and temperatures, problems for which they
were ill prepared scientifically by the type of education then in vogue
at schools of engineering in the United States.
The years at Westinghouse were of great significance when Dick
Soderberg came to MIT as a Professor of Mechanical Engineering
in 1938. Reflective and philosophical by nature, he foresaw the face
of things to come and became one of those contributory to the
revolution in U.S. engineering education that was beginning then
and which, accelerated by World War II, wholly changed engineer-
ing schools by the end of the 1950s.
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CARL RICHARD SODERBERG
269
At MIT Professor Soderberg taught applied mechanics. During
the war years he became Graduate Registration Officer of the
Mechanical Engineering Department. Graduate programs in engi-
neering were then burgeoning and there was ample opportunity to
shape the future. When Jerome Hunsaker became heavily occupied
in Washington as Chairman of the National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics (NACA), predecessor of the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration, Dick Soderberg ran the department. In 1947
he succeeded Hunsaker formally as Head of the department, and led
the department through the critical years of postwar growth and
development. In 1954 (sixteen years after his arrival at MIT) when
he was appointed Dean of the School of Engineering, the Depart-
ment of Mechanical Engineering had acquired a form and style that
made it renowned the world over.
Both as Head of the department and as Dean of the school,
Professor Soderberg was concerned with the broader issues of engi-
neering education with general aims, with philosophical back-
ground, and with the development of character and professional
style. He constantly stressed as a philosophical premise the dignity of
useful work and the value of preparing for such a career.
A year after appointment to the illustrious position of Institute
Professor, Dick Soderberg in 1960, at age sixty-five, went on so-
called half-time service, but of course he remained fully active. So
much so, indeed, that after mandatory full retirement at age seventy,
he was recalled to serve for a half year as Acting Head of two
departments, Mechanical Engineering, and Naval Architecture and
Marine Engineering.
During his busy years at MIT, Professor Soderberg maintained
remarkable associations with industry. The three mentioned below
are particularly notable, for he did what few consultants with limited
time can accomplish: he was the catalyzing agent and provided the
intellectual leadership for developments of far-reaching conse-
quence.
His efforts at the Elliott Company toward the development of a
gas turbine for ship propulsion led to development of the first marine
gas turbine power plant in the United States.
For forty years Dick Soderberg maintained a close association
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
with his native country through periodic consulting trips to Stal-
Laval Turbin AD, a manufacturer of power station turbines, indus-
trial steam and gas turbines, and marine turbines; he was highly
instrumental in the progress of the company.
His long consulting association with United Aircraft Corporation
was a major factor in the development of the now-famous l-57
aircraft turbine engine. The manner in which Dick Soderberg led
the company from the reciprocating engine era to the rotary gas
turbine, and in so doing revolutionized air travel, is remarkable: he
guided and inspired the newly formed group of young engineers
who, starting from scratch, developed the dramatically new series of
engines that made Pratt and Whitney the leading manufacturer of
jet engines in the world.
During the several phases of his career, Professor Soderberg was
the author of fifty-two technical articles, and he received eighteen
patents. He served on many government committees for the Depart-
ment of Defense, NACA, the U.S. Air Force, and the National
Defense Research Committee. He was honored by election to mem-
bership in illustrious scientific academies: the National Academy of
Engineering (NAE), National Academy of Sciences (NAS), Ameri-
can Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal Swedish Acad-
emy of Engineering Sciences. He participated heavily in the
activities of the NAS, the NAE, and the National Research Council
and was active in professional activities of the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers.
Many other honors were bestowed upon him. In 1958 Professor
Soderberg was made Knight of the Royal Order of the North Star
(Sweden), and in 1968 the King of Sweden named him Commander
of the Royal Order of the North Star. His medals include the John
Ericsson Gold Medal of the American Society of Swedish Engineers,
1952; the Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers,
their highest award, 1960; the DeLaval Medal of the (Swedish)
Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences, 1968; and the Gustav
Dalen Medal of Chalmers Institute of Technology, Sweden, 1970.
He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Technology from
Chalmers Institute of Technology in 1951, and the Doctor of Engi-
neering from Tufts University in 1958. In 1975 MIT established in
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CARL RICHARD SODERBERG
271
his honor the Carl Richard Soderberg Professorship of Power Engi-
neering.
Finally, a personal note: When Dick Soderberg started at MIT as
a full Professor, I started as a lowly lab assistant, fresh with a bache-
lor's degree. It was my good luck to be close to him for forty years.
He was my teacher, guide, friend, boss, and colleague. He was
wonderfully well read and intellectually stimulating; for this his
chronic insomnia may have been a blessing, for he read in the
middle of the night. He was unfailingly attentive to and respectful of
junior colleagues and students. I never knew him to have an enemy
or heard that anyone felt unkindly or unfairly treated by him. A bear
of a man, he sometimes blustered when pushed, but he was never
less than open minded. He was truly a remarkable man.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
richard soderberg
