John W. Fisher

John William Fisher (born February 15, 1931, in Ancell, Missouri) is a professor emeritus of civil engineering.

Biography John W. Fisher served from 1951 to 1953 in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, where he attained the rank of 2nd lieutenant. After graduating with a B.S. in civil engineering from Washington University in St. Louis in 1956, he became a graduate student in civil engineering at Lehigh University, where he graduated in 1958 with an M.S. From 1958 to 1961 he worked as assistant bridge research engineer working for the National Academy of Sciences in Ottawa, Illinois at the facility of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Road Test. In 1961 he returned to Lehigh University as a research assistant and graduate student, graduating with a Ph.D. in 1964. He then joined the civil engineering faculty at Lehigh University as an associate professor and was promoted to full professor in 1969, retiring as professor emeritus in 2002. He was named in 1987 "Construction Man of the Year" by Engineering News Record (ENR). He received in 1988 an honorary doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.

In 1999, Fisher was named by ENR Magazine, the leading journal in the construction industry, as one of the "Top 125 People" of the 125 years since ENR's founding. Of Fisher, the magazine wrote, "After helping to conduct post-mortems on nearly every major failure of a steel structure, from the Hartford Civic Center to the Mianus River Bridge, Fisher campaigned for research to advance technology and prevent failures."

On October 11, 1952, in Scott County, Missouri, he married Nelda Rae Adams (born 1933). There are four children from the marriage.

Selected publications