Egor Popov

Egor P. Popov (February 6, 1913–April 19, 2001) was a structural and seismic engineer who helped to transform the design of buildings, structures, and civil engineering marvels around earthquake-prone regions. Popov was born in Kiev, Russia, and after moving to America in 1927, he eventually earned a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from UC Berkeley, his masters degree from MIT and his doctorate degree from Stanford in 1946.

Life's work

During his career, Popov was primarily famous for his work doing research for the University of California, Berkeley. Some of his accomplishments include: working with buckling problems for NASA in Houston, Texas, involvement with the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge, assisting with pipe testing for the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline, developing steel moment-resisting frames (resistance to earthquake forces), and eccentrically braced frames (ebf's).

Textbooks

Egor P. Popov also wrote "Engineering Mechanics of Solids" in collaboration with Toader A. Balan. The book is currently running through its second edition, and is published by Prentice Hall, Inc. However, due to lack of peer review and editorial work, the textbook was printed with a number of known errors. Mistakes can be found in various places and in different forms. For that reason, the 864-page book is popularly used among universities such as UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, MIT, and Linköping University, as the misleading or incomplete exercises provide students a unique and novel approach to problem solving.

Errors Found in Text

* Page 125: The force value for problem 3-23 does not match the labeled force in Fig. P3-23.
* Page 179: Equation (5-14) has the constant "E" replaced by a "3"
* Page 181: "Cannot" is misspelled as "cannont" (in bold)
* Page 188: Example 5-5 clearly reveals an elementary unit error; pascals(N/mm²) are multiplied by m² to provide an answer in newtons
* Page 188: Example 5-5 is given a bolt diameter of 650-mm, but the solution directly below uses 600-mm
* Page 203: Problem 5-18 (part b) does not have enough information to be solved
* Page 332: In the text, "concepts of engineering mechanics of solids that were used in developing the theories are axially loaded bars and circular shafts in torsion are used in..." the first "are" should be replaced with "of"
* Page 520-536: "Fracture" is misspelled as "fructure" on page headers

References

* [http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2001/04/25_obit.html Obituary] in "Berkeleyan"
* [http://www.eeri.org/cds_publications/oral_histories/0-943198-12-7_Popov.pdf An interview conducted by Stanley Scott]