Richard P. Shaw

Published May 30, 2013 This content is archived.

Richard P. Shaw, professor emeritus of civil engineering, died May 19 in Sarasota, Fla. He was 79.

Shaw joined the UB faculty in 1962 as an associate professor in the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies. He was promoted to full professor in 1969 with joint appointments in the departments of Engineering Science, Nuclear Engineering and Aerospace Engineering. He joined the Department of Civil Engineering—now the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering—in 1980.

Shaw specialized in the field of boundary integral equation methods, a technique regarded as an important engineering-analysis tool with applications in all branches of engineering and science. His expertise in the field earned him an Eminent Scientist Award from the Computational Mechanics Institute in 1988.

His other research interests included structural dynamics, geophysical fluid and solid mechanics, acoustics and ocean engineering. He studied tsunamis at the Joint Tsunami Research Effort in Honolulu and was a program manager for environmental forecasting at the National Science Foundation’s International Decade of Ocean Exploration.

He retired from UB in 1996.

Shaw earned a BS in applied mathematics, cum laude, from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn; an MS in engineering mechanics (civil engineering ) from Columbia University; and a PhD in applied mechanics (civil engineering) also from Columbia.