Paul G. Joseph

Biography

Looking back on my journey in soil mechanics, it seems nothing but the same old story–The Three Metamorphoses of the Spirit–that Nietzsche powerfully described in his classic Thus Spake Zarathustra. Thus during my undergraduate with Prof. Ramaswamy, at the University of Madras, Guindy, India, and then in graduate school at Purdue and MIT, I was like a camel, loading myself with knowledge.  After MIT I wandered in the desert until at GEI, thanks to the nurturing kindness of Gonzalo Castro and Steve Poulos, I turned into a lion.  For the next ten years I fought with the great dragon: “‘Thou-shalt,’ is the great dragon called. But the spirit of the lion saith, ‘I will’.”  And then, in the course of this struggle, I became like a child in soil mechanics: “Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea.”

I wonder how many of you will understand how exactly Nietzsche described this, my long (three decades plus and counting)  journey in soil mechanics—I myself understood this only several years after it was all done.

I greatly enjoy the questions and comments I get so please continue to send these to me using the contact mechanism provided by Taylor and Francis.

For more information on me and my work in soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering, please go to my blog at: https://soilmechanics.wordpress.com

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

Soil mechanics, Cognitive Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning

Personal Interests

Motorcycle racing, music, reading

Books

Photos