Though they have probably never heard of him, beachgoers regularly see the work of Robert G. Dean, especially if they visit towns on the barrier islands that line the East and Gulf Coasts.
Dr. Dean, who died on Saturday at 84, was a theorist of beach nourishment, the restoration of eroded beaches through infusions of sand. The techniques he advanced are routine today almost everywhere on developed coastlines; without them, many beach towns would be without beaches.
Though he rarely took a leading role in particular projects, his research, writing and teaching made him the most influential coastal engineer in the United States.
Dr. Dean was an emeritus professor of coastal engineering at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, where he died after a stroke, his daughter, Julie D. Rosati, said. He trained scores of graduate students and produced three influential texts: “Beach Nourishment: Theory and Practice”; “Water Wave Mechanics for Engineers & Scientists,” written with Robert A. Dalyrmple, a former student; and “Coastal Processes with Engineering Applications.”
“It is hard to walk into a coastal engineering consulting firm or an engineering program at a major university and not find a Bob Dean student,” said Robert S. Young, a coastal scientist at Western Carolina University. They are known in the profession as “the Florida mafia.”
Dr. Dean served on panels convened by the National Research Council to study topics like the environmental impact of wind energy projects and the engineering implications of sea-level rise. He also consulted on levee failures in New Orleans and breakwater damage at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California, among other projects.
Though he formally retired in 2003, Dr. Dean continued to teach and consult in the United States and abroad.
Robert George Dean was born on Nov. 1, 1930, in Laramie, Wyo., a son of George Horton and the former Harriet Blevins. He spent most of his childhood in Walden, Colo., and Long Beach, Calif., where he graduated from high school.
He earned a degree in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, a master’s in physical oceanography from Texas A & M and a doctorate in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which he earned in 1959.
Early in his career he worked to analyze wave forces on offshore structures, like oil rigs, but he soon shifted his focus to the coast.
He studied inlet stability, a major issue in Florida, whose coast is lined with barrier islands separated by inlets, almost all of which are artificially stabilized with jetties and other coastal engineering that interrupts the natural flow of sand. Dr. Dean attributed most of the state’s erosion problems to the effects of this stabilization.
Later he turned to beach renourishment and developed formulas to design beach replenishment projects and predict their longevity, tasks that became increasingly important as it became clear that without them there would be few wide beaches in developed coastal areas.
Many coastal scientists criticize the multi-million-dollar projects as doomed to fail, recommending instead restrictions on beachfront development. But even people who challenged Dr. Dean’s faith in the process respected his work.
“Bob has been largely responsible for defining modern coastal engineering,” said Dr. Young, often a critic of the projects. “He was the country’s leading coastal engineer, hands down.”
Dr. Dean was elected to National Academy of Engineering in 1980.
Besides his daughter, a coastal engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers, he is survived by his wife, the former Phyllis Thomas; a son, Tim, and five grandchildren.
Even in the face of rising seas, Dr. Dean maintained his faith in engineering to protect the coast. In part, that was because he did not expect sea-level rise to accelerate, as most climate scientists predict.
If sea levels rise about a foot in the 21st century, as they did in the 20th century, Dr. Dean said in an interview in 2007, then his fellow engineers would be able to maintain 99 percent of Florida’s beaches. “If I had to,” he said, “I’d bet on that.”
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