Biography

All dedicated university instructors understand the importance of mentoring their students, but few have embraced this responsibility as seriously — or with as much imagination — as Biswanath Mukherjee, a distinguished professor in the UC Davis Department of Computer Science. He views teaching as just half of an equation that places equal importance on the need for students to understand how best to absorb instruction, configure it to their individual goals, and then successfully make their way in the professional world.

In 1979, well into an impressive academic and professional career in the UC Davis College of Engineering’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering that had begun in the early 1950s, Gerald T. Orlob, who passed away in 2013, was described as one of the world’s foremost authorities in his field of water quality modeling.

When Enrique Lavernia served as emcee for UC Davis’ Centennial Convocation in September 2008, he made a point — before discussing the upcoming program or introducing any speakers — of acknowledging the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, then celebrating its 50th anniversary.

In October 2007, three years after he retired from his academic career, the late William Chancellor, who was a professor of biological and agricultural engineering — was pleased to attend an event he helped bring about: the historical landmark plaque dedication for the world’s first self-propelled combine, invented by George Stockton Berry in 1886. The ceremony, which took place at the Tulare County Museum in Visalia, Calif., featured Berry’s family members, members of the Tulare County Historical Society, and members of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers.

Subhash Mahajan, a distinguished professor in the UC Davis Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, collects awards and honors at a rate that can’t help raising eyebrows.

Robert Fridley, a professor emeritus of biological and agricultural engineering, was known as an expert on fish farming and mechanized fruit harvesting. His most significant developments included the inertial tree shaker, the integrated shake-catch harvester, shaker clamps that minimized damage to tree bark, and criteria for the design of fruit-catching surfaces to minimize the bruising of fruit during harvesting and handling. He held several patents on these methods.

Robert W. Bower, an emeritus professor in the UC Davis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, lives in a realm of acronyms. Within his field, he is famous for having developed a self-aligned gate MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor), also known as a SAGFET. Bower patented this design in 1969, during his tenure at California’s Hughes Research Laboratory.

Put more simply, Bower invented and refined the basic transistor structure used in the vast majority of computer and memory chips: the world’s most replicated artificial structure.

During an extensive and busy career that began when he earned his doctorate in engineering mechanics at Yale in 1961, Research Emeritus Professor Richard M. Christensen obtained four patents and wrote two books and 100 journal articles on topics as diverse as properties of polymers, kinetic crack growth and life prediction and durability. His works have been cited by more than 1,100 other authors, and he remains a go-to scientist in the field of mechanics of materials.

I.M. Idriss, a UC Davis professor emeritus of geotechnical engineering, was on the second floor of a San Francisco high-rise when the 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake struck on Oct. 17, 1989. As colleagues dove for cover beneath a conference table, Idriss stood in a doorway … where he had a perfect view of buildings swaying in response to the forces he had studied throughout his career.

In June 1964, responding to rising interest from members of the College of Agriculture, UC Davis Chancellor Emil Mrak formed a committee to explore the creation of what eventually — after many more years — would become the campus’ Antique Tractor Museum and Agricultural Machinery Restoration Facility. The members of that nascent committee included agricultural engineer Clarence F. Kelly, who recently had become associate director of the UC system-wide Agricultural Experiment Station.