November/December 2022 - 63

Clyde N. Baker, Jr.
TRUST
Clyde N. Baker, Jr., P.E., S.E., passed away
on August 26. He will be remembered
as a brilliant and visionary geotechnical
engineer who achieved national
and international recognition for his
work in deep foundation design. His
contributions to the geotechnical field
are almost immeasurable and his
leadership and mentorship will be
greatly missed.
Baker received his bachelor's and
master's degrees in civil engineering
from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and a bachelor's degree in
physics from William and Mary
College. He joined the staff at STS
Consultants (formerly Soil Testing
Services) in the fall of 1954. During his
career of more than 65 years he served
as geotechnical engineer for many
high-rises built in Chicago, including
the Willis Tower (formerly known as
the Sears Tower), the John Hancock
Building, the Aon Center (formerly
known as the Amoco Building), Trump
Tower and the Spire in Chicago. He also
served as geotechnical engineer or
consultant on some of the tallest
buildings in the world, including the
Petron Towers in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia, which was the tallest
building from 1998 to 2004; the Taipei
101 Tower in Taipei City, Taiwan, which
was built in 2004; and the Burj Khalifa
skyscraper (known as the Burj Dubai)
in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, which
was completed in 2010. Baker also
consulted on the foundations for
Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia, the Doha
Convention Center and Tower in Doha,
Qatar, and the Incheon 151 Tower in
Incheon, South Korea.
He was a leader in using in-situ
testing techniques correlated with past
building performance to develop more
efficient foundation designs. In the
Chicago soil profile, this facilitated
economical use of belled caissons on
hardpan for major structures in the 60to
70-story height range built during
the 1970s and 1980s. This includes
Water Tower Place, 900 North Michigan
and the Franklin Center, formerly
known as the AT&T Corporate Center,
which normally would have required
extending caissons to rock at a
significant cost premium.
The Clyde N. Baker, Jr. Foundation
Engineering Scholarship Fund was
established in 2020 to honor Baker's
contributions to the deep foundations
industry. He shared his knowledge and
experience with his peers through
numerous conference and university
lectures, technical articles, papers, and
publications. He was the recipient of
DFI's Distinguished Service Award, the
Association of Drilled Shaft Contractor's
(ADSC) Outstanding Service Award, the
American Society of Civil Engineer's
(ASCE) Thomas A. Middlebrooks and
Martin S. Kapp Awards, the Structural
Engineers Association of Illinois'
(SEAOI) prestigious John F. Palmer
Award, as well as the recipient of three
Meritorious Publication Awards from
SEAOI, including the " History of Chicago
Building Foundations 1948 to 1998. " He
was the author of The Drilled Shaft
Inspectors' Manual, sponsored jointly by
DFI and the ADSC. In 2008, he received
the 2007 Engineering News Record Award
of Excellence and the ASCE Opal
Lifetime Achievement Design Award.
Baker was very active professionally
on both the local and national
scene. He was an Honorary Member of
ASCE. He was a past president of SEAOI
and of the Chicago Chapter of the
I l l inois Society of Professional
Engineers. Nationally, he served as
chair of the Geotechnical Engineering
PROFILE
Division of ASCE, editor of its Journal of
Geotechnical & Geoenvironmental Engineering
and chair of ACI Committee 336
on Footings, Mats and Drilled Piers. He
was a member of the National Academy
of Engineering and was the recipient of
the ASCE Ralph B. Peck Award for the
year 2000, the Terzaghi Lecture Award
in 2009 and was selected as a Hero of
Geotechnical Engineering by the GeoInstitute
in 2009.
Baker served as chair, chief engineer
and senior vice president of STS Consultants
for more than 55 years. During the
later years of his career, he was a senior
consultant and a subject matter expert to
AECOM, GEI Consultants and Skidmore
Owing and Merrill.
At the time of his passing at age 92,
he was surrounded by loving family
and friends at his cabin on the marble
bluffs of Lake Champlain in Vermont.
Baker will be interred in his beloved
Charlotte, Vermont, next to his even
more beloved wife, Jeanette, who died
just a year ago. We will all miss him
dearly as his contributions to our
profession are too numerous to count,
but above all he was a kind and
generous man.
AUTHORS Bill Walton, P.E., S.E., F.ASCE, D.GE, GEI Consultants; Bernie Hertlein, FACI, M.ASCE, GEI Consultants; and Bob Shock, Retired
DEEP FOUNDATIONS * NOV/DEC 2022 * 63

November/December 2022

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