Rice mourns loss of retired Professor James Redding Sims

BY DWIGHT DANIELS
Special to the Rice News

James Redding Sims, the Herman and George R. Brown Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering and former vice president of business affairs, died Dec. 17 at the age of 91.

	JAMES SIMS

Sims helped change the face of Rice in the ’60s and ’70s by leading a $35 million campus renovation project while simultaneously chairing the then-Civil Engineering Department.

A 1941 graduate of Rice with a degree in civil engineering, Sims worked briefly as a structural engineer before returning to the university as an instructor in 1942. He earned a master’s degree and doctorate in engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1950 and 1956, respectively.

The pinnacle in Sims’ career was serving as the national American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) president, a post he held in 1982 in which he advocated the interests of more than 72,000 civil engineers across the nation. Sims also fought tirelessly for stringent educational standards and ethical behavior in the profession and led various committees and working groups at the national, state and local levels of ASCE.

The Texas Society of Professional Engineers named Sims Engineer of the Year in 1976 and the Engineers’ Council of Houston gave him its Award of Honor in 1977. He was named Rice Engineering Alumni Outstanding Engineering Alumnus in 1983. The James Redding Sims Scholarship in Civil Engineering, administered by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is an endowed scholarship at Rice.

Sims is survived by his wife of 63 years, Marjorie, daughters Susan Elam and Deborah Fortenbach, son Thomas Sims, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

–Dwight Daniels is a science writer at Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering.