John List - BE

I graduated BE in May 1961 with 62 other engineers from Ardmore, completed ME the following year, before going to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to do a PhD. After a post-doc at Caltech I came to The University of Auckland for 3 years as a lecturer in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, working with Cecil Segedin and Mervyn Rosser. Mervyn and I started the operations research systems/analysis programme.

After 3 years at Auckland and during the move to the City campus, I was invited back to Caltech in 1969 as an Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering Science where I stayed until 1997, becoming head of the department during 1980-1985. In 1983 I formed a consulting engineering company Flow Science Incorporated, where I worked one day a week for 14 years.

In 1997 I decided that consulting engineering was more fun than professoring and left Caltech to take full time control of Flow Science. Flow Science now has four offices, in Pasadena, Philadelphia, Harrisonburg, and Mt Pleasant. We work on all kinds of problems in fluid motion and transport and our most recent large project has been modeling the fluid flow and aquatic chemistry and biology of Boulder Basin in Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam in Nevada. This has been quite a challenge as Boulder Basin has a volume of 9 billion cubic metres and is over 170 metres deep. Another high profile project that some of you may have seen was developing the hydrodynamics of the Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas.

I come back to NZ about 3-4 times a year to enjoy our beach house at Ferry Landing and work on projects with URS and Beca Carter.