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GORDON MASKEW FAIR
1894-1970
BY ABEL WOLMAN
Following a successful engineering career, Gordon Maskew Fair,
who was born on July 27, 1894, in Burghersdorp, Union of South
Africa, died on February 1 1, 1970, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Philosophers have frequently pointed out that ideas have a
greater impact upon society than do material consequences of
ideas. To engineers, the beautiful bridge, the soaring office build-
ing, or the graceful dam offer visible evidence of the translation of
ideas into the service of man.
Professionals choose many routes to attain their major purposes
in life. Whether consciously or not, Gordon Fair obviously chose to
affect his fellow man through the route of ideas as teacher,
writer, investigator, and mentor. That he chose well, his long and
. . .
preeminent career gives ample testimony.
Gordon Fair brought to his life's work an unusual intellectual
capacity, deeply sharpened by extensive and broad education in the
great institutions of learning of his day. He included in his ar-
mamentarium a competence in foreign languages, not usually the
hallmark of many engineers. The statement that evidence of his
accomplishments was not to be found in monumental structures,
or that he did not work with steel or concrete, is only half true.
Most of what he taught, wrote, and preached did in fact find its way
into structures throughout the world, through the more subtle
route of the minds of men.
One could quantify, at least, his direct impact on man via a count
of his hundreds of students. More difficult is the estimate of his
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impact upon thousands of students and practitioners throughout
the globe. His textbooks, perhaps the most valuable yet available,
mirrored the intellect that he possessed to an extraordinary degree.
As a matter of fact, few were as well endowed as he with such
lucidity of reasoning, precision of language, and accuracy of re-
cording. He demanded of his students an equally high level of
performance sometimes impatiently, perhaps even harshly. Such
is the habit of those more broadly endowed than many of their
fellows.
If one were patient, however, one could soon discover that, while
his demands were high, a strong thread ot humor, good sense, and
even gentleness pervaded his life. Those of his friends who had the
good fortune to sit and fish with him by the hour attest to these
deep-seated softening qualities in an otherwise deceptively austere
exterior. While he demanded high quality in the pursuits of his
students, he asked no more than he persistently required of him-
self. The hallmarks of the man were orderliness of conception,
honesty of diagnosis, sharpness of investigation, and clarity of
exposition. And all his works stand as permanent monuments to
these extraordinary virtues.
He was no "ivory tower" academe. He gave much of himself
throughout his career to the needs of man throughout the world.
He traveled widely to lend his competent aid in alleviating the lot of
men, women, and children in almost every part of the disease-
ridden and hungry universe.
One of his most fruitful contributions was to the Rockefeller
Foundation, which he served as a Member of the Board of Scien-
tific Directors incidentally, the first engineer to be so honored.
One of his colleagues in that activity describes him well in these
terms: "Whether it be in the swamps of Sardinia, in the jungles of
Brazil, in the lecture rooms of the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris or
in the laboratories of the London School of Hygiene, the presence
of Gordon Fair inspired all those with whom he came in contact."
He served long and contributed heavily to the peace-time and
war-time activities of the United States and international agencies,
notably, the League of Nations and the World Health Organiza-
tion. His years of uninterrupted contributions to myriads of advi-
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very committees of the National Research Council, in the National
Academy of Engineering, on the Army Epidemiological Board,
and in the earliest efforts of the Agency for International De-
velopment in Central and South America are legion. The number
and variety of these services are astonishing in the lifetime of one
man, no matter how genetically well endowed he happened to be.
It is compulsory that even his friends review anew the list of his
commitments enumerated in this memoir.
Gordon Fair was no mere "sitting member" of these groups. As
he participated in these sessions, he was simultaneously busily
engaged in the laboratory and library, producing new materials,
new interpretations, and new guides and criteria for engineering
action for the betterment of that environment recently dis-
covered by more naive crusaders. Gordon Fair antedated them by a
mere half a century.
The outcome of these wartime efforts, among many others, is
that vade mecum of every global traveler, "globaline," still one of the
excellent bactericides and amoebicides. It is well to remember this
warborne asset to humanity that bears the hallmark of Gordon
Fair's devotion to preventive action.
One of his perceptive admirers, Ed Cleary, properly noted, at the
memorial exercises at Harvard University, that"he chose engineer-
ing as the fulcrum and teaching as the lever for moving the minds
of men to cope with scientific and technologic change." He had an
abiding faith in man's capacity to control his environmental fate
with wisdom and logic. He needed no formal lesson in his own
conception of engineering, that the engineer had a preeminent
responsibility to society. He lived that way!
It may well be said of Gordon Fair what Nicholas Murray Butler
said years ago of another great engineer, William Barclay Parsons,
one-time distinguished member of the Army Corps of Engineers:
"Parsons conceived of the engineer as an instrument of civiliza-
tion." In any such Hall of Fame, Gordon Fair would qualify.
What of the man himself; that private self so often concealed
behind the public facade? Those friends, long close to him at
Cambridge, had years to view him more intimately. They saw him
raising his voice in song. They even claim he had a fine tenor voice!
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Like all true Izaak Waltons he angled patiently and not too success-
fully. As Master of Dunster House, he presided for years over "the
quick and the slow," fairly, judiciously, with reason and, most of the
time, good temper. Good minds deserve some explosive moments.
Again, one of his close friends, Edward S. Mason, described him
well as "preeminently a man of the age of reason, a classic rather
than a romantic, a man with whom one could discuss any subject
with the assurance he would come away with a balanced view."
The parading environmental activists of the coming decade will
sorely miss the sense of equilibrium that Gordon Fair brought to
the discussions of our ever-pressing ills. Although he recognized
the ills, he also emphasized repeatedly the possibilities of solutions.
These he did not feel would come from "the ravings of scaremon-
gers or even by the practice of' confrontation, as favored by the
young, but through the careful scientific study that needs to
precede action."
In his family life, as in his profession, Gordon Fair was fortunate.
His wife, Esther, gentle and understanding, was devoted to him.
He was proud of his sons, Gordon and Lansing, and they of him.
The generation gap was not visible!
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
gordon maskew
