American Scientist

Our esteemed colleague and the longtime author of the Engineering column, Henry Petroski, passed away on June 14, 2023, at 81 years old.

Henry wrote almost 200 articles for the Engineering column, having authored it in every issue since January–February 1991. I’ve had the honor of editing Henry’s columns since 2013. My predecessor, David Schoonmaker, summed up well what editing the column was like: “Working with Henry Petroski was a highlight of my time at American Scientist. The obvious delight he took in developing a story to make complex engineering understandable was infectious. And by creating such a narrative, Henry was able to reveal engineering as both science and humanity.”

Henry was a dedicated writer—he turned in what was to be his final column for American Scientist just a few months before his death, and he passed away shortly after it went to press. His 20th book, Force: What It Means to Push and Pull, Slip and Grip, Start and Stop, came out in 2022. He epitomized the prolific career, to a level that most of us can only aspire to.

Henry’s final column for American Scientist, in our special single-topic issue on scientific modeling, covered some of his favorite subjects, including bridges, failure, and the importance of incorporating real-world mechanics into design. As he pointed out in that column, a brilliant idea is all very well and good, however: “That idea may conceivably promise to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it may have to forever remain at best a half-baked, private thought if it cannot be communicated to someone who can engineer it into something concrete.” The column examined why small models often cannot be linearly scaled up to the largest structures, because mechanics can change with dimension. To explain this idea, Henry used one of his favorite examples of engineering failure, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which famously shook itself apart under high winds in 1940.

In Henry’s May–June 2023 column, “Museums of Bridges,” he enthusiastically included himself among the world’s pontists, taken after the French word for bridge, a moniker adopted by historical bridge devotees. Regular readers of Henry’s column would not be surprised by his declared love for bridges. Over the years, Henry’s columns featured everything from the most famous bridges, such as the Brooklyn Bridge (most recently in January–February 2022) and the Golden Gate Bridge (most recently in January–February 2023), to the less well-known, such as the Genoa Bridge in Italy (September–October 2020) and Government Bridge across the Mississippi River between Iowa and Illinois (July–August 2012). Henry had a way of imbuing bridges with an almost human personality, describing what made each span unique, detailing its often complex history, and describing its importance to a region. He would draw readers into his topic and make them consider objects that they might not have otherwise noticed.

Henry was also well-known for his deep examinations of what he had himself originally thought of as “seemingly frivolous subjects,” everyday objects that we take for granted, but which upon examination have deeper history and wider lessons to divulge about mechanics. His most famous example was the pencil, the subject of one of his early books. In his March–April 2000 column, Henry explained how he had come across the pencil as a subject of interest, spurred by his exposure to low-quality pencils. He noted that “it is not regularity but anomaly that attracts attention, and I thought increasingly of the pencil as representative of all manufactured items and a metaphor for engineering itself.” Henry had a knack for digging into the origins of these often overlooked objects, exploring colorful historical anecdotes, warring patent holders, and stark cultural differences in how they evolved over time in different places. He revisited the subject of pencils in his March–April 2014 column as an example of another of his favored topics: how the misrepresentation of objects can affect our perception of how mechanics works. In that article, Henry lamented how illustrations of pencils often incorrectly show the direction of ridge lines on sharpened pencil points (see figure at above right) and expanded on the need for design to match reality. As he put it: “Engineers rely a great deal on computer drafting to convey their ideas to machinists and manufacturers, but without a keen perception of what looks right and what wrong, an engineer may send a perfectly neat drawing of a totally inappropriate part to a totally confused shop.”

In other columns, Henry continued to explore such everyday objects as the toothpick (November–December 2007), bag ties (May–June 2008), the many ways newspapers have been folded for thrown delivery (May–June 2002), and “pizza savers,” the small plastic devices that stop a pie from being squashed during delivery (July–August 2011). My personal favorite, however, may have been his column on the pocket protector, which appeared in May–June 2014. This seemingly simple plastic device has a long history that Henry unveiled with his exploration of patent diagrams, which he followed up with a tie-in to the cultural significance of engineering during the space race. This column took off on social media with the hashtag #nerdpride, a label I can get behind, as could Henry and a lot of his readers.

Although Henry often employed detailed examinations of small objects to deliver bigger messages about engineering, he also often discussed a myriad of other topics, from skyscrapers to geothermal energy. And he did not shy away from commenting on larger systemic problems. His columns covered such hot-button topics as the persistent problem of misuse of government contracts for private gain, or graft, in infrastructure projects, which he called a “plague” on the nation (September–October 2016), as well as the problematic lack of professional oversight of the condition of American co-op and condominium buildings that could have been behind the 2021 deadly Champlain Towers South collapse in Florida (September–October 2021). Henry broke one of his own rules and wrote the latter column before the final official report on the collapse was released—an endeavor that can take years—because we had received so many reader requests for his analysis of the disaster.

Henry’s shoes simply can’t be filled: He was the first columnist for the Engineering column, and he will remain the only columnist for it. We have decided to retire the Engineering column in his honor. All forms of engineering will still be covered in the Technologue column and throughout the magazine. But Henry’s passing leaves a permanent gap. He will be greatly missed.

Readers have always had a lot to say about Henry’s Engineering column. If you would like to share a remembrance about Henry or about your favorite of his columns, please email us at editors at amscionline dot org. Henry was also a longtime member and an inaugural fellow of Sigma Xi, and there is an obituary for him on the Sigma Xi website.