ABSTRACT
SORENSEN 16.01. 1919 Minneapolis MN/USA 11.06. 1990 Oak Park IL/USA Kenneth Edward Sorensen was, starting in 1946, for nearly forty years associated with Harza Engineering Company, Chicago IL. His career was charted in a number of increasingly important projects, including chief planning engineer, chief technical adviser, vicepresident and, from 1983 to 1985, chairman of the board. He earned a BS degree in civil engineering from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis MN in 1939, returning there to garner an MS degree. He was in World War II a lieutenant with the SeeBees in the Pacific. Sorensen was a world-renowned water resources engineer. He was widely recognized as one of the world’s outstanding planners of river development projects. One of his gifts, an approach that combined art, science and engineering, was his ability to conceive extensive river-basin projects, find ways to improve them, then conceive others of their worth. His successor at Harza said: ‘Tens of millions of people throughout the world have a better life because of Sorensen’s vision and ability’. His deep water resources experience included projects in seventeen river basins including more than twenty-five countries. Among them were several major hydroelectric projects, including the 2,800 MW Inga Project in Zaire or the 10,000 MW Guri Project in Venezuela. Sorensen also contributed to a master plan for irrigating the Jordan River Valley, as well as the Indus River Basin Project in Pakistan, where a 15-year plan was elaborated for developing agriculture, power and flood control in a 14 million hectare canal area. Sorensen was in addition co-editor of the Handbook on applied hydraulics, jointly with Calvin V. Davis (1897-1981). This successful work was based on two editions of 1942 and 1952 edited by Davis alone, and was in the 1970s one of the most cited text in hydraulic engineering. Anonymous (1962). Kenneth E. Sorensen. Engineering News-Record 168(May10): 67. P Anonymous (1985). Sorensen, K.E. Who’s who in engineering 6: 623. AAES: Washington DC. Anonymous (1990). Sorensen, water engineer, dies at 71. ASCE News (9): 3. Davis, C.V., Sorensen, K.E., eds. (1969). Handbook of applied hydraulics, 3rd ed. McGraw-Hill: New York. Sorensen, K.E. (1949). Curves solve reservoir flood-routing equations. Civil Engineering 19(11): 778-779. Sorensen, K.E. (1953). Graphical solution of hydraulic problems. Trans. ASCE 118: 61-77. Sorensen, K.E. (1971). A program for preserving the quality of Lake Minnetonka. Limnological Research Center, University of Minnesota: Minneapolis.
