Nathan M. Newmark

Nathan M. Newmark won international acclaim in 1957 when the 43-story Torre Latinoamericana, for which he was design consultant, was the only major building in Mexico City to withstand a disastrous earthquake. At Rutgers, he received the Phi Lambda Upsilon Prize in Chemistry, the Bradley Mathematics Prize, the Edward Fuller Brooks Prize in Civil Engineering, and he graduated with high honors. He went to the University of Illinois on a fellowship, where he earned a master’s degree and doctorate in civil engineering and was department head from 1956–73. He then served as professor emeritus in Illinois’ Center for Advanced Study from 1976 until his death in 1981. Newmark had also served as a consultant for the Interstate Highway System, the California Bay Area Rapid Transit System, and the Alaskan Pipeline. He earned the 1968 National Medal of Science, presented to him by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and the 1979 John Fritz Medal, the highest honor in the engineering profession. In 1981, the University of Illinois officially renamed the civil engineering building on its Urbana Campus the Nathan M. Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory. Newmark died in 1988.