Steel and Concrete Structures

W. D. Liam Finn graduated from the National University of Ireland in 1954 with a B.Eng. in Civil Engineering. He got his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1957 and 1960 respectively. He started the first program of geotechnical earthquake engineering in Canada at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver where he pioneered the development of dynamic effective stress analysis with the program DESRA in 1975. He was Head of Civil Engineering and Dean of Applied Science at UBC. In 1999, he was appointed as the first Anabuki Professor of Foundation Geodynamics at Kagawa University, Takamatsu, Japan. He is an Honorary International Member of the Japanese Geotechnical Society and the Chinese Society of Soil Dynamics, PRC. He is also an Honorary Professor of the Metallurgical Institute in Beijing. He was Editor of the International Journal of Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering. He served as Chairman of ISSMGE/TC-4 on Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering. Finn’s main research interest is geotechnical earthquake engineering with particular interest in liquefaction, seismic response of sites and earth structures, seismic safety evaluation of dams, seismic response of pile foundations and seismic risk. He has published over 350 papers on these topics and has won several awards including the Legget Medal, the highest honor from the Canadian Geotechnical Society and the H. B.Seed medal from ASCE. Finn consults internationally especially on the seismic safety of dams and liquefaction problems.