G. Wayne Clough - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Clough was born on September 24, 1941 in Douglas, Georgia to Bessie Johnson and Daniel Clough, the youngest of three children. Clough's parents ran the local ice and coal plant until electricity came to south Georgia, after which the family moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee. In Chattanooga, Clough met his wife, Anne Olivia Robinson, while he was in middle school. They have had two children, Eliza and Matthew. Clough attended City High School in Chattanooga.

When he entered Georgia Tech in 1959, Clough planned to receive only a bachelor's degree, which he earned in 1963 and received in 1964 in civil engineering. The faculty encouraged him to earn a graduate degree, and he received his master's in 1965. While an undergraduate at Georgia Tech, Clough participated in the cooperative education program, and was, against his wishes, a surveyor for a railroad company. Clough was a member of Georgia Tech's chapter of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, and lived in their fraternity house on North Avenue for half a year. In 1969, Clough received a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley with the thesis "Finite element analyses of soil-structures interaction in U-frame locks".

Clough's first academic position was as an assistant professor at Duke University. He then became a full professor at Stanford University. In 1982, he went to Virginia Tech as a professor of civil engineering and served as head of their Department of Civil Engineering for seven years. In 1990, Clough became dean of the Virginia Tech College of Engineering. In 1993, he moved to provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of Washington. Clough founded the United States Universities Council of Geotechnical Engineering Research, and served as the organization's first president in 1993. Clough's father died in February 1988, and his mother died in August 1994.