Prof. Hsai-Yang Fang, a pioneer of environmental geotechnology and the founder of the International Society of Environmental Geotechnology (ISEG), passed away peacefully after a brief illness at the age of 95 on Wednesday, July 27, 2022 in Burlingame, CA.
Prof. Hsai-Yang Fang
Prof. Fang was born November 25, 1926 in Fenghua, China. He graduated from the National Taiwan University and went to the United States in 1952 and obtained a Master’s degree in Engineering at Purdue University. While at Purdue, he met Julia Sun, a graduate student at Loyola University Chicago. They married in 1960. Hsai-Yang went on to complete a PhD in Civil Engineering at West Virginia University and a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University. In 1966, he began a long career at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania where he taught and researched for more than 40 years. After retirement at Lehigh, he went on to become a Distinguished Fellow at the Global Institute for Energy and Environmental Systems at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Prof. Fang has authored over 200 papers and 11 books including the Foundation Engineering Handbook, a staple textbook for undergraduate and graduate engineering students.
Prof. Fang was a pioneer in the study of the environment’s effects on foundation structures resulting in his terminology “Environmental Geotechnology”. Throughout his career, Prof. Fang sponsored numerous conferences around the world to introduce the concept of Environmental Geotechnology to structural foundation designers and advance the science around how environmental factors such as earthquakes, landslides, and permafrost can greatly influence the stability of structures built into the soil.
Prof. Fang was widely recognized for his work. He was the first geotechnical engineer invited by the United States Department of State to come to China following the Mao-Nixon talks. He was also invited by the Chinese Government in the 1980s to organize the First Offshore Technology Conference in Shanghai. Until his death, Prof. Fang continued to be the honorary patron of ISEG, a non-profit he created in 1992 to help the global advancement and application of knowledge in the geoenvironmental sciences and engineering.
The death of Prof. Fang is a major loss for the community of environmental geotechnology. We will inherit Prof. Fang’s legacy and continuously promote the development of environmental geotechnology!
Secretariat of International Society of Environmental Geotechnology
August 5, 2022
