Theodore Chaplin, who died recently, was educated at Marlborough, and graduated from Cambridge in 1945. After some years at the Building Research Station, working mainly on the instrumentation of tunnels, he joined the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Birmingham in 1955. He and the late Professor Kolbuszewski formed the MSc Course in Foundation Engineering in 1956, which at that time was one of only two postgraduate courses specializing in the new and seemingly arcane discipline of ‘Soil Mechanics’. The Course continues to this day, and is recognized now throughout the world for its excellence. At the same time Kolbuszewski and Chaplin started the Midland Geotechnical Society, which also has achieved international standing for its publications and symposiums.
Generations of undergraduate and postgraduate students have benefitted greatly from the breadth of Chaplin’s scholarship and the dedication that he gave to his lecturing and research supervision. He was a loyal servant of this University, and will be remembered with affection by his many former colleagues and friends.