1. Michael John Nigel Priestley was a New Zealand earthquake engineer.
16 Facts About Nigel Priestley
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Nigel Priestley made significant contributions to the design and retrofit of concrete structures, and developed the first displacement-based method of seismic design.
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Nigel Priestley's thesis was titled Moment redistribution in prestressed concrete continuous beams.
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From 1967 to 1975, Nigel Priestley was the head of the structures laboratory at the Ministry of Works and Development central laboratories in Lower Hutt, where he led structural studies of bridges and buildings.
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Nigel Priestley was the consulting proof engineer for many major rail bridges and industrial buildings in New Zealand.
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Nigel Priestley served as president of the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering, from 1985 to 1986.
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Nigel Priestley was then professor of structural engineering at the University of California, San Diego from 1987 until 2000.
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Nigel Priestley became professor emeritus of structural engineering at UCSD in 2001.
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Nigel Priestley co-founded the European School for Advanced Studies in Reduction of Seismic Risk in Pavia, Italy, with Gian Michele Calvi, and served as its co-director from 2002 to 2008, and emeritus co-director from 2009.
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Nigel Priestley died in Christchurch of cancer on 23 December 2014.
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Nigel Priestley was author or co-author of over 450 scientific papers and 250 research reports, and was the primary advisor for more than 25 doctoral students.
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Nigel Priestley eschewed force-based design methods for earthquake-resistant buildings and developed the first method for displacement-based design, an approach that has been described as revolutionary.
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Traditional force-based methods could not adequately describe the expected damage, or performance, of a building subjected to seismic forces, whereas Nigel Priestley's displacement-based approach allows engineers to dictate the behaviour of a building in an earthquake.
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Nigel Priestley was conferred honorary doctorates by ETH Zurich and the National University of Cuyo, Argentina.
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Nigel Priestley was a Fellow of the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand, the American Concrete Institute, and the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering.
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Nigel Priestley won over 30 national and international awards for his research and technical papers, including the Fulton Gold Medal from IPENZ in 1973, the Raymond C Reese Award from the ACI in 1984 and 1989, and the Freyssinet Medal from the fib in 2010.