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Sage Advice From Karl Terzaghi
Home > Publications > Foundation Drilling Magazine > FOUNDATION DRILLING 2006 Archive > August 2006 Other Articles

Sage Advice From Karl Terzaghi

The following is excerpted from an article that appeared in the May/June 2006 issue of Geo-Strata magazine, the official publication of the ASCE’s Geo-Institute. Our thanks to Dr Ralph Peck, the American Military Engineers, and Geo-Strata for permission to reprint this excerpt. (Editor)

Karl Terzaghi had this in mind when he gave his students at Harvard a set of rules for which he called the game of engineering. The rules are full of wisdom:

Engineering is a noble sport which calls for good sportsmanship. Occasional blundering is part of the game. Let it be your ambition to be the first one to discover and announce your blunders. If somebody else gets ahead of you, take it with a smile and thank him for his interest. Once you begin to feel tempted to deny your blunders in the face of reasonable evidence, you have ceased to be a good sport. You are already a crank or a grouch.
The worst habit you can possibly acquire is to become uncritical towards your own concepts and at the same time skeptical towards those of others. Once you arrive at that state, you are in the grip of senility, regardless of your age.
When you commit one of your ideas to print, emphasize every controversial aspect of your thesis which you can perceive. Thus, you win the respect of your readers and are kept aware of the possibilities for further improvement. A departure from this rule is the safest way to wreck your reputation and to paralyze your mental activities.
Very few people are either so dumb or so dishonest that you could not learn anything from them.

Engineering is indeed a noble sport, and the legacy of good engineers is a better physical world for those who follow them. You are well started on a career that can leave such a legacy and, as you pursue that career, I give you my very best wishes.

Publication No. 167. Military Eng., 69:450, July-August 1977, pp. 232-234. The article is copyrighted by the Society of American Military Engineers and is reprinted by permission.

Ralph B Peck, Ph.D., P.E., Hon. M.ASCE, is Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He can be reached by fax at 505/323-7760.

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