George W. Housner, Carl F Braun Professor of Engineering, emeritus, died after a short illness on 10 November 2008, just a few weeks before his 98th birthday. He was in the retirement home in Pasadena where he had lived for several years. For all of us who knew George, this marked the end of an era. Few people have guided and nurtured a field the way George led earthquake engineering over a per...