Tribute to Subrata Kumar Chakrabarti

With great sadness, we inform readers of the Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering and the engineering community of the sudden passing of our renowned friend Dr. Subrata K. Chakrabarti (see Fig. 1). We would like to express our sincerest condolences to his wife and two children. Like his family, friends, and students throughout the world, we, his colleagues in the engineering profession, are shaken by this great loss, and our thoughts are with his family during this sorrowful time. Before we recognize the outstanding works of Subrata Chakrabarti, we acknowledge the great love that he had for his wife Prakriti (means “Nature”), his son Prabal and daughter Sumita, and his granddaughter Sajni.

Subrata received his B.S. degree in 1963 from Jadavpur University, India, where he was awarded the Jadavpur Gold Medal, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1965 and 1968 from the University of Colorado, winning a scholastic citation. He had a long and illustrious career at Chicago Bridge and Iron (CBI) in Plainfield, Illinois, from 1968 to 1996, much of it as Director of Marine Research. This was followed by a career in consulting, as a founder and president of Offshore Structure Analysis Inc., and in teaching, as a member of the College of Engineering faculty at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Subrata was possessed of a keen love of teaching and sharing his shining intellect. He reached out to industry by teaching his famous courses on floating structure dynamics and model testing, and on the theory and practice of riser and mooring dynamics. In addition, his long list of invited lectures have taken him from coast to coast in North America, Brazil, Italy, France, Denmark, India, China, and Australia. He lectured at many prestigious schools, such as the Technical University of Denmark/Lyngby, the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis.

The output of Subrata’s professional life is as stunning in quantity as in quality. He has written seven books on offshore engineering, numerical modeling in fluid-structure interaction, hydrodynamics and vibrations, offshore structure modeling, and nonlinear methods in offshore engineering. He has authored over 125 refereed journal publications and over 75 conference proceedings publications. His last contribution to this Journal appears in a forthcoming issue. His particular expertise lay in wave-structure interaction as it applies to offshore and coastal structures. His contributions cover hydrodynamics, floating structure dynamics, numerical and experimental fluid mechanics, structural vibrations, and statistical methods for metocean data analyses.

His recent projects included the development of software for on-board monitoring of drilling rig risers and mooring systems, hydrodynamic software development and verification, and model testing supervision. He was responsible for the promotion of testing facilities, design of wave tanks, wave generators, instrumentation, numerous model tests, execution of outside funded research, analytical studies, software development in fluid-structure interaction, and testing of hydrodynamic projects. He led the design and analysis of various offshore projects, including the Dubai storage tanks, the CBI Submersible, the Garoupa Mooring Tower, a North Sea Production Platform, Gulf of Mexico platforms, and the development of a deep-water compliant drilling platform in the Santa Barbara channel.

He studied viscous flow effects and their coupling with wave-structure interaction, and was involved in the analysis of heave plates for added mass and damping for wave energy structures and in the integrated hydrodynamic and structural analyses of deepwater compliant offshore systems [spars, tension leg platforms (TLPs), floating production storage and offloading systems (FPSOs)] and semisubmersible concepts. His success in developing a world-class laboratory testing facility at CBI and his skillful consulting efforts led him to assist others in establishing wave tanks, for example, to refurbish basins at Escondido, California, and to launch the world’s largest model basin at COPPE, at the University of Rio de Janeiro.

Subrata’s son Prabal informs us that his father loved and appreciated his native Bengali culture, especially music, and the works of the Bengali poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore said “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” This aspect permeated Subrata’s life. Prabal says “Our Baba always felt that he, and everyone, was obligated to serve. I think he regarded his desire to serve as God’s gift to him. Service to his profession was his calling.”

Not surprisingly, Subrata gave an enormous amount of his time and energy to our profession by organizing international conference series such as the Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering (OMAE) Offshore Symposia. His participation on numerous editorial boards included service as:

Although his colleagues tried to reward him, it was always evident that he took his real reward in a deep love for his profession. Still, the awards represent signposts along the way demonstrating his exceptional services, which his colleagues continually sought and appreciated. He was awarded the rank of Fellow in no less than three prestigious societies: ASCE, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. His scientific eminence earned him the membership in the most prestigious National Academy of Engineering. His awards included the following:

Subrata was a distinguished individual on all fronts. He lectured worldwide and served as an expert and consultant to the industry and governments, but his greatest virtue was his humility. He was kind, considerate, and friendly, and his hallmark was a great smile. We are blessed to have had the opportunity to serve with a cordial colleague and a master teacher who inspired us by setting a great example of how we can serve our profession, and by loving and working with people of different origins, religions, and cultures. As George Bernard Shaw said, “Life ranks all men, but death reveals the eminent.” It appears as though Shaw’s words were meant to describe our esteemed colleague.

Farewell to our “gentle giant,” compassionate leader, articulate diplomat, dedicated professional, loving husband and father, and efficient organizer, as well as an approachable, patient, and persevering human being. In closing, we use the words of Subrata’s admired Tagore: “Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.” We will all miss Subrata, and take comfort in his light that lives on in his works and in our memories.