Four elevated to ASME's highest status, Honorary Membership

Emily M. Smith
ASME NEWS

The number of engineers who have received ASME's highest distinction — Honorary Membership — grew in June when four more Society members were elected to that membership level.

Ray M. Bowen, PE; Frank Kreith, PE; J. Tinsley Oden, PE; and Donald N. Zwiep, PE, were approved by the Board of Governors during the Summer Annual meeting to become Honorary Members. The recommendations for Honorary Membership came from ASME's Committee on Honors.

Frank Kreith

Honorary Membership is bestowed for distinctive accomplishments in engineering, science, industry, research or public service and those allied pursuits beneficial to the engineering profession.

This year's recipients bring the total number of engineers to receive this honor, which was created in 1880, to 367. Of those, 86 are still living.

Bowen, 68, of Houston, is a professor at Texas A&M University. His activities in ASME include service on the Council on Education and the Board on Professional Development.

Kreith, 81, is a resident of Boulder, Colo. He is a recipient of the Edwin F. Church Medal in 2001 and the ASME Medal in 1998. He also received the Ralph Coats Roe Medal in 1992; the ASME's Dedicated Service Award in 1990; and the W. Reed Warner Medal in 1981.
His service to ASME has included steady involvement in the Distinguished Lecturers Program and the Council on Public Affairs.

J. Tinsley Oden

Oden, 67, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, is the founding director of the Texas Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics.

He was the recipient of the Timoshenko Medal in 1996 and the W. Reed Warner Medal in 1990. Since 2001, he has served on the PTC 60 committee on Verification and Validation in Computational Solid Mechanics.

Zwiep, 80, is a past president of ASME. He served from 1979-80. He is a two-time recipient of the ASME Dedicated Service Award, first in 1986 and again
in 1994.

Donald Zwiep

His service to ASME includes the Council on Education, the Board on Pre-College Education and the Committee on Honors.

During his years at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Zwiep rose from professor and head of the school's mechanical engineering department to acting provost and vice president of academic affairs.

Currently, he is a professor emeritus at WPI.

 

back to news & features