Robert “Tony” Dalrymple is the Willard and Lillian Hackerman Professor Emeritus in the department of Civil and Systems Engineering, having earned the emeritus status in 2016.
Dalrymple’s research is focused on coastal engineering, which includes water waves and their impact on shorelines, structures, the ocean bottom, and water-related natural hazards, such as rip currents and tsunamis. His most recent research involves the dissipation of waves propagating over mud and the application of the numerical method smoothed particle hydrodynamics to free surface flows using graphics cards for computation (GPUSPH).
Dalrymple is a Distinguished Member of ASCE and in 2013 he became an Académico Correspondiente of the Real Academia de Ingeniería in Spain. He is a former member of the Coastal Engineering Research Board of the Corps of Engineers and former chair of ASCE’s Coastal Engineering Research Council and the National Research Council’s Marine Board. Dalrymple was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2006 and named a Fellow for the Coasts, Oceans, Ports & Rivers Institute (COPRI), a semi-autonomous institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 2010.
Dalrymple is also the founder of coastal list, a list-serve for coastal engineers worldwide. In total, Dalrymple has served on eight National Research Council committees related to coastal issues.
In 2013, Dalrymple was a H. Burr Steinbach Visiting Scholar at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College, his master’s from University of Hawaii, and his PhD from University of Florida.