Chopra

Try googling "Anil Chopra".  The first links that will appear are related to one of the most famous living Structural Engineering professors in the world, who also happened to be my graduate advisor this past year.  Professor Chopra wrote a book that is used literally all over the world on structural dynamics and, although he is over 70 years old, he is probably the clearest professor I have ever had.

He's been sporadically working with Mom for a few years, as a consultant in one of her projects, and, when he saw my name in the applicants list to the SEMM program, he picked me as his advisee.  Not only did he help me choosing the classes I was taking every semester, but he kept telling me and Mom that, anytime I needed anything, I should go talk to him.

Today, he organized a party at his place for some of his students and I went too.  He has a really nice house in Orinda, on the other side of the hills, and very friendly wife and daughter.  It's so interesting to get to know people's homes and families.  It explains so much about their personality...  This party was specially nice because Professor Chopra took some time to introduce every single person that was there to all the others, and also because we had the chance to hear to some of the most interesting stories of his life.

Listen to this one:  when Professor Chopra decided to write his book, after his wife and daughter pushed him to do it, he decided to through away all the class notes he had for the structural dynamics class he had been teaching for years and years.  He literally threw them away a few hours before the garbage truck usually passed by his house.  Why's that?  Because he thought the book would never be intellectually outstanding if he was basing it on written information he had already ready.  How daring was that?

How lucky am I to have so closely dealt with people as brilliant as Professor Chopra this year?  Sooooo lucky!