Roland L. Sharpe

This is the twenty-eighth volume in the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute's series, Connections: The EERI Oral History Series. EERI began this series to preserve the recollections of some of those who have had pioneering careers in the field of earthquake engineering. This volume in the EERI Oral History Series presents the life and career of Roland (Rol) Sharpe (1923 -2018). After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II, Sharpe completed his bachelor's and master's...
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This is the twenty-eighth volume in the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute's series, Connections: The EERI Oral History Series. EERI began this series to preserve the recollections of some of those who have had pioneering careers in the field of earthquake engineering. This volume in the EERI Oral History Series presents the life and career of Roland (Rol) Sharpe (1923 -2018). After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II, Sharpe completed his bachelor's and master's degrees in civil engineering at the University of Michigan. His first job was with the firm of John A. Blume in San Francisco, where he worked for 23 years. The firm was doing innovative projects, and Sharpe had a chance to work on several unique ones: the large wind tunnel at Moffett Field in Santa Clara County, California; a 15-story building in San Francisco with an unusual column design; field experiments with the dynamic properties of school buildings; and the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC), a concrete tunnel over a mile long that had to take the curvature of the earth into account because of its precision. Beginning in the late 1950s, he took a lead role in the Blume firm for the seismic analysis of nearly 20 nuclear power plants. His other projects included sonic boom testing for the U.S. Air Force, and establishing a Blume satellite office in Tehran, Iran, that worked on major infrastructure projects until the Islamic Revolution of 1979. He was the first executive director of the Applied Technology Council and project manager for the very influential ATC-3 project that has formed the basis for seismic codes since its publication in 1978. Subsequently, he was one of the founders of the Building Seismic Safety Council.