Page 8 - CEGE Magazine Spring 2017

Memorials
OMER BLODGETT (BSE 1941, MS 1974) died at the age of 99. He is remembered as a world-renowned authority on the design of welded connections. Blodgett earned his Bachelor of Science in metallurgical engineering (1941) and his master’s degree in mechanical engineering (1974) at the University of Minnesota and then became a welding superintendent at the Globe Shipbuilding Company. He later worked with Lincoln Electric Co. where he spent 60 years. Blodgett was influential in the development of national standards for the code of the American Welding Society. He authored several significant papers and is particularly well known for two books: Design of Welded Structures and Design of Weldments. These books, originally published over 40 years ago, are considered the foundation for the entire field of design for welding. Blodgett received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Institute of Steel, the T.R. Higgins Lectureship Award, and in 1999, Engineering News Record identified him as one of the top 125 engineers in the past 125 years. Additionally, the University of Minnesota gave Blodgett the Outstanding Achievement Award in 2007. Blodgett’s spirit will live on through all he has done.
ROSE S. LING passed away in January 2017. She was 95 years old. Rose Ling and her husband Joseph Ling (PhD 1952) were longtime friends and benefactors of CEGE. Rose Ling went to college in Shang-
hai during WWII. That is where she and Joseph met. She was the first woman to obtain an MS degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. After three years working in China, she returned to do polymer research at General Mills and Henkel Company. Joseph Ling was the first doctoral graduate in environmental engineering (then called sanitary engineering). At the time of his retirement in 1984, he was responsible for 3M’s environmental programs worldwide. He was a recipient of the University’s Outstanding Achievement Award. Joseph died in 2006; he was 86.
Dr. and Mrs. Ling established the Joseph T. and Rose S. Ling Professorship in Civil Engineering in 1997 to encourage, recognize, and retain outstanding faculty in the environmental engineering program in CEGE. That Professorship is held by Professor William Arnold. They also established the Joseph T. and Rose S. Ling Chair in Environmental Engineering, which is held by Professor Paige Novak.
If you would like to remember Rose Ling and Joseph Ling, the family requested memorials be sent to the Rose S. and Joseph T. Ling Graduate Environmental Engineering Fellowship (Fund 6790) at the University of Minnesota.
HILMAR VON SCHÖNFELDT (PhD 1965) died in March of 2017. Von Schönfeldt was part a group of about ten graduate students in Professor Charles Fairhurst’s rock mechanics research group in the 60s. The diverse group of young men came from several European and Middle Eastern countries, as well as from the United States. Von Schönfeldt came to Minnesota after completing a graduate degree in Mining/Petroleum Engineering at the Technical University of Clausthal, Germany. His doctoral work was on the use of hydraulic fracturing for determination of stresses in rock at depth.
After receiving his degree, von Schönfeldt taught Petroleum Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He then moved into the petroleum industry where, among many accomplishments he helped pioneer the technology of long-hole horizontal drilling of coal seams to extract methane. Most recently, he was advisor to the World Bank on the application of coal bed methane drainage in China.
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