Draft:Karl S. Pister


 * Thanks for your note. Could you please take a look at my new version of the Draft:Karl S. Pister to see whether it now meets the "standards," which are hard to pinpoint from the many links provided in your review.  If the draft does not meet the "standards," please point out specifically which standards to help me address these points.  Thanks again. Egm4313.s12 (talk) 15:25, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Biography
Karl Stark Pister was born June 27, 1925, in Stockton, California. He graduated from Stockton High School as class valedictorian in 1942, and from UC Berkeley with a BS in Civil Engineering in 1945. After a short stint in the Naval Reserve and an assignment to Okinawa, Japan, during World War II, he commenced studies at Berkeley during the fall of 1946, and graduated with an MS in Civil Engineering in 1948. This was followed by a PhD in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1952.

When Pister was hired at UC Berkeley in 1952, he initially conducted research on material properties of Portland Cement Concrete and the behavior of torpedo nets. For this early research work, he received the Wason Medal for Research, awarded by the American Concrete Institute. During the late 1950s he also began a multi-decade association with Lawrence Livermore National Labs. Over the next two decades, he served as Vice-chair of the Civil Engineering Department (1964–65), Chairman of the Division of Structural Engineering and Structural Mechanics (1970–71), Chairman of Committee on Educational Policy at Berkeley (1972–73), Senate Policy chair and Academic Senate, Berkeley Division, vice chair (1976–78), and Vice chairman and chairman of the nine-campus Academic Council and Assembly of the Academic Senate (1978–1980).

A distinguished alumnus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Pister was appointed Dean of the College of Engineering in 1980, a position he held for ten years. From 1985 to 1990, he was the first holder of the Roy W. Carlson Chair in Engineering. From 1991–1996 he served as Chancellor, UC Santa Cruz. He then returned to Berkeley to work as Vice President for Educational Outreach in the UC Office of the President (1999–2000) and to chair the task force on upgrading California Memorial Stadium (2004–2012). Pister was committed to promote social justice.

The American Society for Engineering Education presented him with the Vincent Bendix Award for Minorities in Engineering, and the ASEE Lamme Medal (from the American Society of Engineering Education), which is "bestowed upon a distinguished engineering educator for contributions to the art of teaching, contributions to research and technical literature and achievements that contribute to the advancement of the profession of engineering college administration." He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Mechanics, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an Honorary Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.

Pister was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1980 for his "Contributions in the use of advanced principles of mechanics in understanding the behavior of engineering materials." A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected in 1994 while being the Chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz, in the area of "Mathematical and Physical Sciences" with specialty "Engineering and Technology," Pister was the recipient of the Berkeley Medal (1996) and the Presidential Medal of the University of California (2000). In 2006, The California Alumni Association named him Cal Alumnus of the Year.

Karl Pister married Rita Olsen in 1950. They have four daughters and two sons.