Henry Petroski (born 1942) is an American civil engineering professor at Duke University where he specializes in failure analysis. He is a prolific author, having written a dozen books - most notably "To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design" (1985) - including a number of titles detailing the industrial design history of common, everyday objects, such as pencils, paper clips, and silverware. Wikipedia
The definitive Wikipedia entry for Henry Petroski. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Petroski
Henry Petroski, Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor Henry Petroski received his bachelor's degree from Manhattan College in 1963 and his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1968. www.cee.duke.edu/faculty/petroski/index.php
Henry Petroski, Ph.D., P.E. Dr. Henry Petroski was appointed to the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board on September 10, 2004, by President George W. Bush. www.nwtrb.gov/board/petroski.html
Description of the book Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design by Petroski, H., published by Princeton University Press www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/8132.html