In Memoriam Professor Sandor Popovics

Professor Sandor Popovics was well known and respected internationally because of his contribution to the research field of concrete materials. Many of his books were translated into multiple languages, in which the Chinese version of “Fundamentals of Portland Cement Concrete – A Quantitative Approach” was published in 1990 with a title of “Fresh Concrete”. This book is still widely referenced.  Given how well many people know Prof. Popovics and his work, I thought it best to write this as a personal retrospective to tell what I knew about Prof. Popovics.

To me, Professor Sandor Popovics is not just a professor in department of Civil Engineering at Drexel University; he is also the father of my Ph.D. advisor John Popovics. When I studied at Drexel, the father and son worked in the same department, and they even shared one office for a while. I was always amazed by this interesting father/son and colleague relationship. When I introduced myself during conferences, there were always some people asking me “Which Popovics are your working with? The senior or junior?”

I knew Professor Popovics’ name for the first time when I was a graduate student in China. I read a paper written by John and his father. I have a deep impression of that paper, not only because of the technical contents of the paper, but also because of the authors of the paper, because it was interesting to find two authors have the same last name. In 1999, I decided to pursue Ph.D. degree in the US. Because of my interests in non-destructive testing research of concrete, I sent an email to Prof. Sandor Popovics. A few days later, I received a reply from John. At that time, he just started a faculty position at Drexel. John introduced himself as the son of Prof. Popovics.  John was interested in my research background, and very soon made me an assistantship offer. A few months later, John told me he received the NSF CAREER Award. He also sent me his CAREER proposal. I did not hesitate to accept the offer, because I was really interested in the research project. Another reason was I was impressed by John’s sincerity.   I know I made a right decision.

I knew John through his father. When I arrived at Drexel, I also met his father first. My first impression of Prof. Popovics was that he was a nice and energetic old man. He always dressed formally, and came to office everyday at the same time. He attended our group meeting, asked questions, and occasionally gave John some suggestions. Of course, not all of his suggestions did John accept. During my study at Drexel, I almost saw Prof. Popovics every day in school. I am pleased to share some stories in these pages.

John taught a new course “NDT technologies for Infrastructure” at Drexel. At Drexel, most of graduate courses are taught in evening, from 6pm to 9pm. Three-hour lectures are very challenging for both the instructor and students. Sandor came to every class, and always sat on the first row. He was almost 80 years old at that time. He usually started to doze off in one hour, left classroom during break and never came back. One time I heard John was asking his father: “Is my class a good place to sleep?” Sandor just smiled without answering.

This course covers some fundamental signal process sing knowledge. One day, I met Sandor in hallway. He secretly asked me a question “What is angular frequency?” I told him angular frequency is 2pf, differs from frequency f by a factor 2p. He understood and happily left. I experienced many culture shocks during my first year in the US. That was one, because I had never seen a famous professor before who would like to lower himself to ask a student a fundamental question. Since then, he occasionally came to the lab, asked me some questions, or asked me doing small favors for him. I was wondering why he did not ask John directly instead of coming to me. I started to understand him when my dad visited us a few years later.

Professor Popovics was working on a project using high frequency ultrasounds to evaluate concrete strength.  He needed a student to help on Matlab programming. John told me I did not have to help his father if I don’t want to. I was not familiar with Matlab at that time, so I told Sandor I could not help. I would say ‘Yes’ if I could. Finally, I did him this favor 3 years later, when Sandor visited John in Urban, IL. At that time I studied at the University of Illinois with John, and was close to my graduation. Before his visit, Sandor had asked John to tell me that he wanted a small favor from me. I ran a Matlab code, and generated some figures for his high frequency research project.

Last year, I attend the ACI convention in New Orleans. To my surprise, I saw Sandor Popovics’s name on ACI program list. I confirmed with John. John said yes, his father would indeed give a presentation at ACI. Unfortunately I did not meet Prof. Popovics at ACI because I had to leave early.

Although I knew Sandor is famous in concrete research field, I still did not have a clear idea about how famous he is  until I talked to other students. At UIUC, several students in concrete material group asked me if John is the son of Prof. Sandor Popovics. They all read Sandor’s book many years ago.  One of Prof. Shah’s students told me a story. When she had different opinion on any question with Prof. Shah, Shah will not insist if she could find evidences or references from Popovics’s books.

The last time I met Sandor was on 2006 Chinese New Year in my Chicago apartment. My parents lived with us at that time. I invited John and his family to my home to celebrate Chinese Year. Sandor was visiting John in Illinois too. That was a busy and exciting day. My parents were very happy to have so many visitors at home, although they do not understand English. We made hundreds of dumplings. John’s daughter Miia still remembers my Mom’s dumpling now. We also took a photo with John’s family.  

It is a great bless that Professor Sandor Popovics had lived a health life for 88 years.

This article is the English version of the blog " 追忆 Sandor Popovics 教授"posted on March 3, 2010. This memorial article was reviewed by John Popovics.

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