Morteza Torkamani, an associate professor of civil engineering in the Swanson School of Engineering for 37 years (1980-2017), has died at 83.
Torkamani’s colleague in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, John Brigham — who joined the school in 2008 — remembered Torkamani as a senior faculty member with whom he worked on graduate students’ committees and on faculty committees.
“Even then, he was very much a passionate professor,” Brigham said. “He was very committed, always in the office, working hard.”
Torkamani’s academic focus was on the equations that governed the stability of structures and how buildings respond to earthquakes and winds — particularly on how they might fail. He taught a broad range of courses, particularly for structural engineering and mechanics, from early classes on dynamics of solids up to master’s-level courses on advanced structural analysis.
He was responsible for delivering a large part of the structural analysis coursework that remains today, and thus, “a lot of the class structure there and the curriculum structure there is owed to his guidance,” Brigham said.
“He was a very rigorous teacher” known for his tough, demanding classes, he added. Students, referring to him by nickname, had a saying: “ ‘If you could make it through a Tork class, you can make it through anything.’ I think that was said with appreciation.
“He was frankly very quiet, a reserved person, but he was always willing to contribute,” Brigham said. In person he was “very warm, always willing to help out with teaching committees. He was always there and willing to lace up his boots and get to work.”
Morteza Torkamani earned medals in wrestling during his undergraduate years at Tehran University in Iran, and was instrumental in helping to improve conditions in Iran by building roads as a civil engineer. He earned a Ph.D. in his field from UCLA. “His contributions to the field, including a wealth of scholarly literature, remain highly regarded by his graduate students and colleagues,” noted a departmental remembrance.
He is survived by two sisters and a brother.
— Marty Levine