This year, the seventh International Symposium on Reinforcement of Historical Buildings and Transferring them Safely to the Future will be held in memory of Erhan Karaesmen, who passed away on July 23, 2004. Our prof, whose brief biography you can find below, was a member of the Chamber of Civil Engineers throughout his life. Karaesmen, who also served as the second chairman of the board of directors in the 1970s, has participated in numerous symposiums, seminars and meetings in many of our branches.
Erhan Karaesmen has been on the organizing committees since the beginning of the Historical Structures Symposium, the first of which was held in Ankara in 2007. Our prof, who was also a member of the organizing committee for this symposium, managed the meetings with all his energy.
We respectfully commemorate our valuable prof.
“Karaesmen, who graduated from ITU in 1959, worked as a research and project engineer in Switzerland, France and the USA for many years in the early stages of his career. His doctorate in science from the Faculty of Science at Sorbonne University in Paris gave him the opportunity to work in academic environments in foreign countries. Upon his return to Turkey, he had the chance to teach full-time and part-time in various educational institutions, especially at METU. Apart from some minor interruptions, he continued a teaching career that spanned 42 years at METU. He worked as a public administrator for a period and served as the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Local Government. He has had artistic and cultural publications, first in foreign languages and then intensively in Turkish, for many years. He has won various services and awards within this framework, and most recently, he was given the “TÜYAP 2009 Art Criticism Service Award.”