Non-Member Awardee

Clyde N. Baker, JR. was born in Flushing, New York on May 6, 1930. He earned a Bachelors Degree in Physics from William & Mary College and then went on to Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned Bachelor and Masters Degrees in Civil Engineering. Upon graduation in 1954, he joined the staff of STS Consultants, Chicago, Illinois (then known as Soil Testing Services).

Over the next 50 years he served as the geotechnical engineer on the major portion of high rise construction in Chicago. He has served as geotechnical engineer or consultant on seven of the sixteen tallest buildings in the world including the three tallest buildings in Chicago, the Sears, Hancock and Amoco buildings, and the tallest buildings in the world; the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and the 101 Financial Center, in Taipei, Taiwan, currently under construction.

He has developed an international reputation in the design and construction of deep foundations and has been a leader in using in-situ testing techniques correlated with past building performance to develop more efficient designs. In the Chicago soil profile, this has facilitated the economical use of belled caissons on hard pan for major structures in the 60 to 70 story height range (such as Water Place and the AT&T building), which normally would have required extending caissons to rock at significant additional cost.

He has been very active professionally on both the national and local scene and has shared his knowledge and experience with his peers through numerous conference and university lectures, technical articles, papers and publications. Mr. Baker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, an Honorary Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and has been the recipient of the ASCE prestigious Ralph B. Peck and Martin S. Kapp Awards.

Clyde and his wife, Jeanette, have three children: Mark Allan Baker, Lynn Diers and Glenn Baker; six grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Clyde ran track and cross country in college and ran his first marathon in Boston in 1953. After a 17-year lapse, he started running again in 1970 and has run in over 40 marathons. Clyde and Jeanette are both active in their church and community and he is on the Board and Treasurer of a Quaker charity, providing grants in Africa and South India.