Civil Engineering May 2021 | Vol 29 No 4

Civil Engineering May 2021 51 Enjoying reading your SAICEmagazine? How about advertising here? CONTACT: Barbara Spence TEL: (011) 463 7940 EMAIL: barbara@avenue.co.za University of California, Berkeley in 1968/69 with a thesis titled, The effect of non-linear material response on the behaviour of pavements subjected to traffic loads . That was in the days of old mainframe building size computers and he ventured into the realms of finite element analysis. Prof. Carl Monismith at the Berkeley Department of Civil Engineering still rates him as one of the best researchers and students that went through the hallowed halls of the Berkeley School of Engineering. That is after a similar stellar academic record at the University of the Witwatersrand for his first degrees. “When I arrived at Berkeley in 1983 to do a Masters in transportation engineering, I was awed by the reference to George Dehlen with professors implying, “Oh you will do well because we know people from South Africa like George Dehlen did very well here.” Needless to say, that put the fear of God in me! (During an informal discussion with Prof. Phil Paige-Green a decade or so ago, Prof. Carl Monismith indicated that George’s PhD thesis was the best of all of his hundreds of students over more than five decades and, in fact, was the only thesis that he still kept on his bookshelf at home). “When I met George as a young engineer starting my career as a researcher it was in his role as pioneer in the then new field of transportation engineering at the old NITRR CSIR. We literally were put together as a new group under his leadership, more or less like a ‘skunk works group’, in a separate building from the old NITRR Building on the CSIR campus. This field of expertise change under the leadership of George created a new generation of researchers in the field of transportation engineering, including people who all proceeded to make their own mark in the broader field of transportation. “A lot of the work George did also centred around policy devel- opment, support and guidance to the then national Department of Transport, the various provincial roads departments and metropolitan/municipal authorities that slowly woke up to the broader concept of transportation and traffic engineering. George continued to play a leading role in the old NITRR for years, heading up the growing field of transportation research with stellar research output and impact nationally and internationally. “When the new market-oriented Division for Transport and Road Research was created as part of the total CSIR re- orientation in the late 1980s, George switched gears again and started functioning as ‘champion of causes’ in transportation engineering and developed into a very wise mentor for many researchers and professionals in this field. When I arrived at the University of Pretoria’s Department of Civil Engineering in 1998, he was still involved as an Honorary Professor, helping our department and continuing his mentorship role with distinction in his typical, quite unassuming manner, but with major impact on persons around him.” – Dr Emil Horak George will be remembered as a giant in the road and transport industry and with fondness as a person that touched the lives of many people. Prepared by MalcolmMitchell