Ray W. Clough

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ray William Clough, (born 1920), is Byron L. and Elvira E. Nishkian Professor of Structural Engineering in the department of Civil Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley and one the founders of the Finite Element Method (FEM). His article in 1956 was one of the first applications of this computational method. He coined the term “finite elements” in an article in 1960. After graduating from the University of Washington in 1942, Clough served as an Air Force Weather Officer until beginning his graduate studies at MIT in 1946. He received his Sc.D. in civil engineering in 1949. He then taught at the University of California, Berkeley, for nearly 40 years until retiring to become emeritus professor of civil engineering in 1987. Clough is also credited with developing the Earthquake Research Center at UC Berkeley. He served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Earthquake Engineering and is the recipient of many honors including the George W. Housner Medal from the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and the Prince Philip Medal from the Royal Academy of Engineering in London. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Chinese Academy of Engineering. In 1994, President Clinton presented Clough with a National Medal of Science.