A story that started in the Northwest Frontier Province, which found its way to the ghats of Banaras and has now established its roots in California; having witnessed the horrors of partition, is still being zealous to break new grounds: this is the tale of Sh. Anil K. Chopra.
Sh. Anil K. Chopra was born on 18th February 1941 in the city of Peshawar, current-day Pakistan. His father, Sh. Kasturi Lal Chopra, worked in the All-India Radio, now known as Akashvani, and his mother, Smt. Sushila Malhotra, was a homemaker. With hazy memories of Independence and the shift of home from Pakistan to India, he spent his childhood growing up in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.
He credits his consistency to his mother, who from early on in his life inspired him to push himself into a better version. He could have finished intermediate studies at the age of 14 but was made to repeat the tenth grade to gain a chance to grow more mature. He ranked thirteenth in the high school examinations in his state, and ninth in the intermediate one. The lesson by his mother to try to do the best in everything he undertook became his guiding principle throughout his life.
Initially a medical enthusiast, he was talked out of it by an uncle who was in the same field. That discouragement altered his path and he eventually found his way to engineering. Best options in those days were the University of Roorkee and the Banaras Hindu University. Being of a tender age of 15, he did not fit the required admission criteria of most of the colleges as the minimum age for admission was 17. BENCO, having such no rule, became his home for the next few years of his life. He majored in Civil Engineering and with the consistency inculcated in him in his childhood days: went on to stand first in order of merit in his department. This gold medal was evidence of his interest in the field.
With a B.Sc. degree in his hand, he became one of the four people to be selected nationwide for a job in Standard Vacuum Oil Company. Since the company did not really utilize the knowledge he had gained through his years in BENCO, he chose to shift jobs. This paced up the arrival of the next chapter of his life. His subsequent step in education came after his second job, in Kaiser Engineers, where some fellow engineers had gone to graduate schools in the United States. This motivated him to apply to universities there in late 1960.
Having saved just enough to travel to the States, the financial constraints he faced had limited his choices. Despite that, he applied to universities like MIT, the University of Illinois, and UC Berkeley. The University that came through with a financial offer was UC Berkeley, with an offer for a teaching assistantship. This is where he began his journey of an M.S. in Civil Engineering. That 20-year-old Indian student was first assigned to serve as a teaching assistant in a junior-level structural analysis course taught by Professor Howard Eberhart but was accepted as a TA only after successfully solving problems at the start of a session. He could henceforth assist the Professor in teaching students.
After graduating in 1963, he next endeavored for a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering which came after an offer for an opportunity to work on a project. As a Ph.D. student, he developed a method for computing the seismic force on a potential sliding mass at higher elevations in an earth dam. He had the clarity of wanting to become a professor ever since his days as a graduate student, which in turn lead to his future doors.
After two years of being the Acting Assistant Professor in Berkeley, the rising interest of Bill Hall led to a job offer with firm future prospects. Bill Hall reasoned that there was no tenure track faculty position in Berkeley for Sh. Chopra and he was welcomed in the University of Illinois. This was noticed by the faculty at Berkeley, and soon a faculty position was created for him where none initially existed. He stayed and in the next few years had a whole cadre of earthquake engineering professors to work with.
In his years as an educationalist offering courses in structural dynamics and earthquake engineering, he published a textbook ‘Dynamics of Structures: Theory & Application to Earthquake Engineering’ in 1995, which is now in its 5th edition. He has also authored more than 385 published papers. Along with that, he has served in advisory boards for government organizations as a consultant on earthquake design and safety evaluation of many concrete dams and intake-outlet towers. His many awards including the Nigel Priestley Prize for Earthquake Engineering Excellence and the 2013 Norman Medal are just testimony to his everlasting legacy.
Starting his life amidst the chaos of a partition and breaking new grounds eventually, Sh. Anil K. Chopra has managed to inspire generations of engineers: one batch at a time
Find the EERI Oral History featuring Sh. Anil K Chopra here.
This article has been written by Sanskriti Pathak (PHY '25), Content Team, SAIC, IIT (BHU), Varanasi.