Living Long
Our profession has found the secret to aging well.
By Henry Petroski
Among the departments in the Bridge, the quarterly magazine of the National Academy of Engineering, is “In Memoriam.” In this section, the passing of members is noted, along with some basic facts and the citation that accompanied their election to the NAE. What has made this ongoing feature in the magazine so interesting to me is not only its informational value but also the inescapable pattern it presents.
Of the two dozen or so notices listed in each issue, I would estimate that at least three quarters of the deceased engineers lived into their upper eighties and nineties, and even past 100 years of age. It was thus with some sadness that I found that the age of NAE members at the time of their death was omitted in the latest issue of the magazine, which meant that I could not continue to test my hypothesis that at least this subset of engineers lived to a ripe old age.
But the Bridge is not the only publication that notes the passing of engineers. The New York Times seems to carry an inordinate number of obituaries of members of our profession. And the style of the Times’s obituary section is to include the deceased person’s age in the headline, which also often notes explicitly that he or she was an engineer.
And these obituaries confirm, at least anecdotally among the group warranting notice in the Times, that engineers do live longer than average. For example, as I write this, among the obituaries in the paper for January 2, 2018, is one that reports on the death of Kenichi Yamamoto at the age of 95. As the headline announced, Yamamoto headed the team at Mazda that developed the rotary (Wankel) engine for commercial use.
If it is true that engineers live longer lives than average, to what can we attribute this? My first guess is that engineers tend to remain intellectually active, as do long-lived persons generally. I know of few engineering colleagues who just walked away from their interests upon retirement. They looked upon retirement as an opportunity to pursue ideas that interested them but that they did not have time to pursue during their active careers.
I regularly receive mail from elderly engineers who have read my books and columns. They inquire about everything—from local bridges that they want to know more about so they might help their local historical society secure landmark status for them to obscure structures that they can find little information about in the literature. My brother, who is a retired civil engineer in his seventies, regularly informs me of his latest excursion into mysteries associated with ancient structures.
Keeping an active mind seems to be a generally accepted way, if not a prerequisite, to achieve longevity. Of course, fatal accidents and illnesses can foil the best-lived life, and the obituary pages often tell those unfortunate stories. Keeping an active mind may be a necessity condition, but it is not a sufficient one for living long.
Long-lived engineers also seem to take great pride in their profession. In Kenichi Yamamoto’s obituary, for example, he is quoted as having written, “I am proud to be an engineer” and to have been part of a team that developed an engine that “symbolized the magnificent union of technology and romance that took place in the latter half of the century” past.
Engineers tend to be like that. They take pride in their work, and they see themselves not merely as a cog in a machine but as an essential part of the system that makes nonstandard machines, such as the rotary engine, a commercial success. These accomplishments not only add spice to life but also may add years to the lives of those who engage in them.
I recently had some correspondence with the managing editor of the Bridge, and she informed me that omitting the age of deceased members was an oversight. The next issue of the magazine will reinstate the ages and thus, I expect, reinforce the observation that engineers do live longer.
Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering at Duke University.
Image Courtesy of Catherine Petroski