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C. A L L I N C O R N E L L
1938–2007
Elected in 1981
“For development of practical methods for application of probability
to structural and earthquake engineering.”
BY ROBIN K. MCGUIRE, ROSS B. COROTIS, AND
GREGORY B. BAECHER
C. ALLIN CORNELL, who died on December 14, 2007, at
the age of 69, was an early proponent of using quantitative
probability methods to define structural reliability and safety
and, more importantly, using those concepts to make rational
engineering decisions. His work had a fundamental impact on
building codes and standards of practice in the design and
retrofitting of structures to withstand earthquakes (commercial
buildings, dams, bridges, and power plants), strong winds and
waves (offshore oil platforms), and hurricanes (commercial and
residential buildings). He was elected to the National Academy
of Engineering in 1981, at the age of 42, for the “development
of practical methods for application of probability to structural
and earthquake engineering.”
Born in Mobridge, South Dakota, in 1938, Allin received an
A.B. in architecture and an M.S. and Ph.D. in civil engineering,
all from Stanford University. His dissertation, “Stochastic
Process Models in Structural Engineering,” and his 1971 book
(co-authored with Jack Benjamin), Probability, Statistics, and
Decision for Civil Engineers (McGraw-Hill), laid the foundation
for his lifelong interest in using stochastic models to represent
environmental loads on structures and determine structural
responses to those loads. His book is still a standard reference
for students and researchers, and its title reflects Allin’s
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46 MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
conviction that structural reliability and safety are not abstract
concepts but practical applications that must be used to improve
engineering decisions.
In 1964, Allin became a Ford Foundation Fellow at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he joined
the regular faculty in 1966. Since then, his hundreds of papers
have defined the field of structural reliability and safety. His
early papers on first-order, second-moment concepts established
the field of probability-based codified structural design. As a
result of his research on structural reliability and safety
techniques, he was the inaugural recipient in 1987 of the CERRA
Award from the International Civil Engineering Risk and
Reliability Association. The American Society of Civil Engineers
presented him with the Moisseiff Award (1977), Norman Medal
(1983), and Fruedenthal Medal (1988) in recognition of his
research contributions to solving structural-reliability problems
in civil engineering.
In 1983, Allin moved back to Stanford as Research Professor,
a half-time commitment that gave him time to pursue consulting.
With this arrangement, his consulting advice benefited from
his research results, and his research directions and interests
were guided by the problems faced by practicing engineers and
earth scientists. Through his collaboration with industry, Allin
developed a basis for the probabilistic design of drilling and
exploration platforms and was a strong advocate for ensuring
the structural reliability of offshore structures. He also made
significant contributions to “risk-informed” decision making
for nuclear power plants (the application of probabilistic
descriptions of environmental loads).
In addition to reliability and safety problems that could be
addressed purely with engineering applications, Allin had a
keen interest in the earth sciences and in the applications of
reliability and safety concepts to earthquake design. His seminal
paper, “Engineering Seismic Risk Analysis,” published in 1968
in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society, is often cited as a
foundational document for the field of probabilistic seismic-
hazard analysis. In this paper, Allin argued that optimal
engineering decisions on seismic design or retrofitting had to
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C. ALLIN CORNELL
begin with the rupture on the fault that released crustal-strain
energy rather than with the earthquake ground motion at the
foundation of a structure. This paper was the basis for the first
seismic-hazard map in the United States that used probability
theory; the map was published by the U.S. Geological Survey
in 1976.
As he pursued these ideas, Allin came into contact with many
earth scientists as well as earthquake engineers. From 1986 to
1987, he was president of the Seismological Society of America,
which awarded him the Harry Fielding Reid Medal (its highest
honor) in 2001. He was elected a fellow of the American
Geophysical Union in 2002, an honor accorded to only a handful
of engineers over the years. On the engineering side, he was
the Distinguished Lecturer of the Earthquake Engineering
Research Institute in 1999 and recipient of the Housner Medal
(its highest honor) in 2003.
With his brilliant analytical mind, Allin often expressed
profound impatience with anyone who used fuzzy terms or
took liberties with precise mathematical definitions or equations.
For example, in a 2005 paper describing the advantages of mean
seismic-hazard calculations, he included an addendum with a
correct, precise definition of the term “mean frequency,” and
he described how the term was often misunderstood or misused
in the technical literature. Allin was always more concerned
with technical accuracy than with brevity, to the consternation
and disapproval of many technical editors. Allin’s draft
manuscripts often included parenthetical comments with
qualifications or exceptions to statements in the text. A colleague
once observed that his parenthetical remarks contained more
technical insight than the main theses of many papers.
The terms “aleatory uncertainty” and “epistemic uncertainty”
are good examples of the importance Allin placed on using
precise terms in a precise way. Many of us initially objected to
the use of these terms on the grounds that they were more
cumbersome than the commonly used “randomness” and
“uncertainty.” Allin’s rejoinder was, “Those common terms
have been used so imprecisely and interchangeably in the past
that they are useless. If we adopt two completely new terms
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48 MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
with precise definitions, people will have to use them correctly.”
Aleatory uncertainty and epistemic uncertainty are now
standard terms in both earthquake engineering and the earth
sciences, a tribute to Allin’s vision and persistence. Uninterested
in cleverness for its own sake, he was determined that
intellectual laziness not be allowed to limit the usefulness of
the tools of probability by reducing precise calculations to fuzzy
intuition.
Throughout his career, Allin was careful to give his colleagues
proper credit for their work. For example, in 2007 he documented
his collaboration in the 1960s with Luis Esteva from UNAM in
Mexico, who contributed the earthquake-occurrence and
ground-motion models that were integral to probabilistic
seismic-hazard analysis. Allin’s contribution was to integrate
those models in a probabilistic format to obtain unbiased
estimates of what is now called “seismic hazard,” but he was
insistent that Esteva’s contributions be properly recognized.
When he published technical papers co-authored by graduate
students, Allin preferred to list the students’ names first.
Throughout his professional career of almost 45 years, Allin
was a mentor, colleague, and friend to many engineers and
earth scientists. From the highest levels of government to his
first-year graduate students, he advised us all with the same
even, informative style. Those of us who knew him as a graduate
advisor found him to be a tough but fair critic who would accept
only our best efforts in developing and documenting our
research. Our careers have been better for this constant reminder
that the details of our work matter and for the gift of his
friendship and humor.
Allin is survived by his wife, Elisabeth Paté-Cornell, Professor
and Chair of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford,
with similar research interests, and their two children, Phillip
and Ariane Cornell; and three children from an earlier marriage,
Eric Cornell, Robert Cornell, and Joan Fazzio. He is also
survived by two sisters, Joan Scheel of Santa Rosa, California,
and Bonnie Bassinger of Edna, Minnesota.
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