Remembering Dan Moye
My father, Tom Lang, first met Dan Moye at the Sydney Water Board, just as the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Authority was being formed. Tom was Associate Commissioner of SMHEA and he found in Dan an immediately likeable personality, competent and insightful, and in 1949 Dan became the first Chief Engineering Geologist of the Snowy.
My sister Fairley and I heard a lot about him from our father during our time in Cooma—he was always “Danny”, always someone who could be relied upon to carefully consider the parameters of the job, the inherent problems, the research and development that needed to be done to ensure that the geology and engineering worked together. Those who worked in the Engineering Geology Laboratory with Dan were encouraged to look beyond the geology, work closely with the engineers, and develop their professional skills to the utmost. Dan also developed close working relationships with engineers around the world, and closer to home with consultants such as John Jaeger at the Australian National University with his experimental work in rock mechanics and rock bolting.
In 1959 our family moved to the United States when Tom joined Bechtel Corporation. In 1962 he also became an adjunct Professor in the Department of Mineral Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and recommended that Dan fill in a vacancy in the Department for the 1962-63 academic year. One of the doctoral students at Berkeley who worked closely with Dan was Richard Goodman, who credited him with influencing his later establishment of the geological engineering program at Berkeley and his future work in rock mechanics. Goodman’s first book, Methods of Geological Engineering, was dedicated to Dan Moye.
We saw a lot more of Dan and his family during their time in Berkeley. His death in 1975 was a great loss to Tom Lang and to Australia.
Dan Moye was an engineering geologist highly respected by his peers, whose work established the profession of Engineering Geology in Australia and the importance of rock mechanics around the world.
