Bob wrote in our 60th-anniversary yearbook that his retirement plans had been changed when “Mr. Alzheimer took residence in my brain.” He died Sept. 28, 2015, after a seven-year struggle with the disease in which, he reported, faith in God had helped greatly.
Bob was born in China and came to America with his family in 1947. At Princeton, he was a member of Dial Lodge and became a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He completed his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Princeton and then worked at the U.S. Steel Research Center in Monroeville, Pa., until 1966.
After that, he joined the faculty of the department of mechanical engineering and mechanics at Lehigh University, where he served for more than 40 years as a professor and department chair. He was a leading international authority on the fracture mechanics, fatigue, and corrosion failure of aircraft materials. Bob helped to develop current predictive models for aircraft-component life and safety and wrote a book summarizing his work on fracture mechanics. He and his colleagues developed countless new ways of improving the safety and effectiveness of airplanes, bridges, buildings, and other complex engineering systems.
Bob is survived by his wife, Lee; two children, including William ’77; and two grandchildren.