Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Inventory of the Morrough P. O'Brien Papers, 1918-1981
O'BRIEN
No online items
View entire collection guide
Search this collection
Table of contents
Title: Morrough P. O'Brien Papers,
Date (inclusive): 1918-1981
Collection number: O'BRIEN
Creator:
O'Brien, Morrough Parker, 1902-1988
Extent: ca. 12 linear ft. (26 boxes)
Repository:
Water Resources Collections and Archives
Riverside, CA 92517-5900
Shelf location: This collection is stored off-campus at NRLF. Please contact the Water Resources Collections and Archives staff for access
to the materials.
Language:
English.
Collection is open for research.
Copyright has not been assigned to the Water Resources Collections and Archives. All requests for
permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head
of Archives. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Water Resources Collections and Archives as the owner of
the physical items and is not intended to include or imply
permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader.
[Identification of item], Morrough P. O'Brien Papers , O'BRIEN, The Water Resources
Center Archives, University of California, Riverside.
University of California, Riverside. College of Engineering
Hydraulic engineering
Channels (Hydraulic engineering)
Hydraulics
Beach erosion
Hydraulic models
Inlets
Tides
Hydraulic laboratories
American Shore and Beach Preservation Association
Morrough Parker O'Brien was born in Hammond, Indiana, on September 21, 1902. He completed
high school in Toledo, Ohio, and received a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in 1925. He did graduate work at Purdue University, 1925-1927,
and in 1927-1928, as the John R. Freeman Scholar of the American Society of Civil
Engineers for study of fluid mechanics at the Technische Hochschule in Danzig and The
Royal College of Engineering in Stockholm. He received three honorary degrees: the D.Sc.
from Northwestern University; the D.Eng. from Purdue University; and the LL.D. from the
University of California.
O'Brien engaged in three fundamentally different careers. His academic career as
Professor, Chairman, and Dean of Engineering at the University of California, Riverside,
spanned the years 1928-1959. A second career was his pioneering work in the development
of coastal engineering. His third career was his service form 1949 until his death to
General Electric Company, to the University of Florida and other universities, and to
government agencies.
Ernest O. Lawrence and Robert J. Oppenheimer were appointed assistant professors in the
same year as O'Brien, and the three became good friends. These associations greatly
influenced his views regarding the importance of research in a modern engineering school.
During his tenure as Dean of the College of Engineering at Berkeley he led the
development of the College to its top-ranked status in many engineering disciplines. He
was widely regarded as a powerful and perceptive leader in engineering education. Under
his leadership, the University established the external Engineering Advisory Council, the
Engineering Alumni Society, and such research units as the Institute of Traffic and
Transportation Engineering, the Sanitary Engineering Research Laboratory, the
University-wide Water Resources Center, and the Biomechanics Laboratory (in cooperation
with the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the UC Medical School in San Francisco). UC
President Emeritus Clark Kerr, who had served as Chancellor during the later years of
O'Brien's tenure as Dean, remembered him as "the mighty Mike" and the "builder of the
College of Engineering and a builder of Berkeley" during a symposium held in O'Brien's
honor in March 1987. (A record of that symposium is in
Shore and Beach,
July/Oct. 1987).
O'Brien received a number of honors from the University. O'Brien Hall, which houses the
Hydraulics Laboratory and the Water Resources Collections and Archives, was named for him, and a
portrait of O'Brien hangs in the entry hall of this building. He was awarded a Doctor of
Laws degree in 1968. In April 1988 he was awarded the Clark Kerr Award, given by the
Academic Senate. Dean O'Brien was also awarded the Lamme Award for excellence in teaching
by the American Society for Engineering Education.
O'Brien was the founder of modern coastal engineering. He wrote a number of papers on the
subject which have had a lasting influence. He was appointed Civil Engineer for the U.S.
Army Board on Sand Movement and Beach Erosion in 1929, and initiated research by this
board on coastal engineering. In 1930 he made field studies along the coasts of
Washington, Oregon, and California, and wrote a detailed seven-volume report on the
results of his observations. A landmark paper on the relationship between tidal prism and
entrance area was one of the results of these studies. He summarized many of his
observations and thoughts on beach processes and the effects of structures on beaches in
his paper "The Coast of California as a Beach Erosion Laboratory" (
Shore and
Beach,
July 1936). In 1938 he was appointed a member of the Beach Erosion Board,
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and served on it until it was abolished in 1963. He was
then appointed to its successor, the Coastal Engineering Research Board, serving there
from 1963 until 1978, a total of 40 years on the two boards.
The years of World War II were extremely busy for O'Brien, serving as Chairman of the
Mechanical Engineering Department until 1943 when he was appointed both Dean of the
College of Engineering and also Chairman of the Department of Engineering. He was
Executive Engineer of the Radiation Laboratory under Professor E.O. Lawrence in
1942-1943. O'Brien was asked by Lawrence and General Groves, the Director of the
Manhattan Project, to recruit an engineering team to design the engineering facilities at
Oak Ridge for the electromagnetic system. O'Brien said that probably the most important
thing he did in his life was to convince them that there was not time to build a
competent staff, that they should hire companies with an established engineering staff to
do the job. He was in charge of the Statewide University of California Engineering
Science and Management War Training Program, 1940-1944, when the program registered
46,000 students who worked under 1,800 instructors. He worked for the U.S. Navy Bureau of
Ships on underwater sound, on cavitation generated by submarine propellers (the results
of his research were immediately implemented by submariners), and on the design and
operation of amphibious craft. He also worked with Professor H.U. Sverdrup of the Scripps
Institute of Oceanography on the forecasting of waves, and he directed a program of field
and laboratory studies of landing craft for the bureau. In 1950 he and Professor Joe W.
Johnson started what are now known as the International Conferences on Coastal
Engineering.
O'Brien was a member of the Army Scientific Advisory Panel, 1954-1965, serving as its
chairman, 1961-1965; a member of the Defense Science Board, 1961-1965; member of the
Board of the National Science Foundation (a Presidential appointment), 1958-1960; and he
served on numerous committees of the National Research Council. He was twice awarded the
Distinguished Civilian Service Medal.
He was a leader in several fields of engineering, including pumps and air compressors.
The compressor design for the first American axial flow jet engine was laid out exactly
in accordance with the method presented in the paper by O'Brien and Folsom entitled "The
Design of Propeller Pumps and Fans." It was incorporated in what became the J47 engine
with a production run of thousands. He was elected to the General Electric Company
Propulsion Hall of Fame in 1984.
In 1988, his oral history,
Morrough P. O'Brien: Dean of the College of
Engineering, Pioneer in Coastal Engineering, and Consultant to General Electric,
was published by the Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library.
Professor O'Brien died on July 28, 1988, at his home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, at the age of
85.
Excerpted from:
In Memoriam, by R. E. Connick, H. D. Eberhart, J. W.
Johnson, J. R. Whinnery, and R. L. Wiegel, 1988.
Correspondence, reports, and documents, concerning sedimentation, flow of water in
channels, rivers, flood control, waves and surge, beach erosion, dams and related
projects, pipes, hydraulic models, and pumps.
Collection described in:
Dictionary Catalog of the Water Resources Collections and Archives, University of California, Riverside (G.K. Hall and Co., 1970).
Note
Note: There is no item no. 77