Norman Dahl, 85, engineer, consultant
By Read Kingsbury



 
Norman C. Dahl 
 
Norman C. Dahl, whose widespread interests and deep concerns touched the lives of people from India to Block Island, died Jan. 11 in Fairlawn Nursing Home, Lexington, Mass. He was 85.

Mr. Dahl’s career covered a wide range and took him all over the globe: He was a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an officer of the Ford Foundation, an author, and a consultant.

A summer resident of Block Island since 1969, he played an instrumental role in getting the water study by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey that unraveled the underground water resources of Block Island and in arranging for Harvard’s School of Public Health Lyme disease study on the island.

"He was a soft-spoken guy with a steely resolve to do good in the world," said Peter Wood, a long-time friend. "He had a very sharp mind and had a really interesting career."

Seattle native

A native of Seattle, Mr. Dahl took his undergraduate degree in civil engineering at the University of Washington. "He was the first engineering student and the first non-frat person to win election as president of the student body," said his wife of 61 years, Dorothy Dahl.

During World War II, Mr. Dahl worked for the federal Office of Scientific Research and Development at Princeton, in London and finally in Guam, where he was a civilian on the staff of General Curtis LeMay, architect of the air assault that brought Japan to the point of surrender. "His special expertise was in how buildings fail and how they survive," an obvious interest of the Air Force, Mrs. Dahl said. He received the Army-Navy Certification of Appreciation for outstanding civilian services during the war.

Back from the war, Mr. Dahl did graduate work at MIT, receiving his doctorate in mechanical engineering in 1952 and remaining on the faculty, becoming a full professor in 1959. He also co-authored an important and long-popular text, "An Introduction to the Mechanics of Solids."

During this period, the government of India asked for help in the transfer of technology from advanced nations to India. Mr. Dahl led an MIT team to India and subsequently served two years, 1962-64, as leader of the Kanpur Indo-American Programme, a consortium of nine American Universities that helped organize the Institute of Technology in Kanpur. Mr. Dahl and his family and colleagues "were the first Americans living in the city who were not missionaries," Mrs. Dahl said.

She recalled the scene when a computer donated by IBM was carried by bullock cart from an airfield to the campus, and she recalled the family recorder concerts that gave them entree to Indian homes and musical evenings. Mr. Dahl received an honorary degree from the institute in 1967.

The well-known Harvard economist and author John Kenneth Galbraith was ambassador to India at the time and became a friend of the Dahls. Last week he wrote a tribute to Mr. Dahl’s work for the Boston Globe. "The most spectacular achievement" of his team was its "contribution to the computer revolution in India," Galbraith wrote. He paid tribute to Mr. Dahl’s "talent and energy… He was a powerful servant of American international policy and practical effort and, in short, a serving citizen of not one but several countries in his time."

From 1968 to 1971, Mr. Dahl was the Ford Foundation’s deputy director of new programs in India, working in a variety of fields, from agriculture to industrial management to urban planning, and the family lived in New Delhi. Mr. Dahl then moved to New York as program advisor to the Ford Foundation, with special expertise in the relationship of technology and employment in developing countries. It was an assignment that took him to such nations as Indonesia, Egypt and Afghanistan. With a co-author, he published "An Inquiry into the Uses of Instructional Technology," which the foundation published in 1973.

On leaving the Ford Foundation, he became a consultant, working here and abroad for governments and clients, largely on the issues of technology and education in developing nations. With Jerome B. Wiesner, prominent scientist, educator and anti-nuclear writer, he edited "World Change and World Security" in 1978.

An island home

In 1969, the Dahls became owners of an 18th-century farmhouse on West Side Road, and later built a new house there. Mr. Dahl’s interest in island water sources led to service on the town Sewer Commission. And as home-building mushroomed, he and his wife, with Lucy Martin, saw a need and wrote a little book of advice to new island property owners, "So You Want to Build on Block Island."

In recent years, Mr. Dahl’s faculties had become impaired by Alzheimer’s Disease, and for several years he was a resident of a nursing home.

Survivors include his wife and a daughter, Sabra, of Cambridge, Mass.; a son, Christian, of King Ferry, N.Y.; and three grandchildren. Mr. Dahl was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

A memorial celebration will be held at 5 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28, at the MIT Faculty Club. Next summer an interment ceremony of cremated remains will be held at the Island Cemetery. Memorial donations may be made to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, 322 4th St. N.E., Washington, D.C., 2002.