BS 1963 in Civil Engineering
MS 1964 in Sanitary Engineering
Dr. Paul Mac Berthouex retired in 1999 after 28 years with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Throughout his career, Dr. Berthrouex took pride in educating people in developing countries and helping provide them with safe water supplies, while also excelling at research, publishing, and teaching at University of Wisconsin - Madison. His international projects ranged from designing a storm water drainage system around the Schwetzingen Palace in Germany and researching and designing three water purification plants in Apia, Western Samoa, to coordinating a six-year project to design and build a new engineering campus in Indonesia. He is the author of Statistics for Environmental Engineers. A quick glance at this textbook will confirm the value of the simple and understandable approach to statistics that Mac has made available to everyone in our profession.
Dr. Berthouex has been the national leader in defining how to best collect and analyze data used in the environmental area. His work with cost optimization is also well known and well regarded. Cost optimization, using simple mathematical and statistical techniques, was unique when he introduced it in the mid-seventies. His cost optimization course continues to be one of the more practical for graduating engineers.
In 1971 he was awarded the Harrison Prescott Eddy Medal by the Water Pollution Control Federation. He was awarded the Rudolph Hering Medal from the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1975 and in 1992 for the most valuable contribution to the environmental branch of the engineering profession. He is a two-time recipient of the Radebaugh Award, from the Central States Water Pollution Control Association.
His commitment to international environmental engineering projects and education has been manifested by presentations on water pollution control in Mexico on a project with The University of Guadalajara, and acting as consultant and advisor on water quality standards in India with the Environmental Protection Research and Training Institute (Hyderabad, India), the Central Pollution Control Board of India, and the World Bank.
His applied research on water quality and wastewater treatment led him to establish the Wisconsin Consortium for Applied Water Quality Research in 1985. He was chairman of the college's Environmental Engineering Program, Secretary of the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage Commission, and Institutional Coordinator for both the National Center for Clean Industrial and Treatment Technologies, and CenCITT Consortium.
Immediately after his retirement, Dr. Berthouex helped develop curriculum and laboratories as an advisor to Sekolah Teknik Tinggi Linkungan, a private school in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, that specializes in environmental engineering.
Dr. Berthouex is a member of American Society of Civil Engineers, Water Environmental Federation, International Association on Water Quality, American Water Works Association, American Chemical Society, International Environ metrics Society, Sigma Xi, Chi Epsilon and Tau Beta Pi. He received a BS degree in civil engineering in 1963 and an MS degree in 1964 in sanitary engineering from The University of Iowa, and a PhD in civil engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He recently published two books on pollution prevention and control. He also has taught short courses in Taiwan.
Inducted: Saturday, June 7, 2003