Henry Petroski
✓ Source-basedstableAmerican Professor and Author (1942-2023)
Henry Petroski was an American engineer specializing in failure analysis. A professor both of civil engineering and history at Duke University, he was also a prolific author.
Also inDeutsch
Photos 1
Awards 1
Writers from United States 6
About this person
Henry Petroski was an American engineer specializing in failure analysis. A professor both of civil engineering and history at Duke University, he was also a prolific author. Petroski wrote over a dozen books - beginning with To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design (1985) and including a number of titles detailing the industrial design history of common, everyday objects, such as pencils, paper clips, toothpicks, and silverware. His first book was made into the film When Engineering Fails. He was a frequent lecturer and a columnist for the magazines American Scientist and Prism.
United StatesFame.am measures public visibility signals. It does not measure human value, talent, morality, or credibility.