Thien Wah
.50 linear ft.
A1995-047
1890-1945 (unknown)
Dr. Wah was born in 1919 in Magwe, Burma. He was educated at the University of Rangoon, the University of Utah, Harvard University, and the University of Illinois. In 1952, he married Edith Hvalgren of Prophetstown, Illinois. Dr. and Mrs. Wah had three children, Tara, Anita, and David. He moved to San Antonio with his young family in 1957 to take a research position at Southwest Research Institute. From 1971 to 1984, he served as Professor of Engineering at Texas A & M Kingsville, where he taught and continued his research. During his long and productive career, he authored over fifty original papers and two books in the field of civil engineering. Having witnessed the devastation of his beloved home country during World War II, he developed a lifelong concern for peace, justice, and human rights. During the 1950s and 60s, he was a leader in the civil rights and peace movements in San Antonio. In later years, he directed his efforts toward supporting peaceful solutions to conflicts in the Middle East. His serious concerns were balanced by a fine sense of humor and he is remembered for his many witty letters to the editor of the San Antonio Express-News on political and international affairs. In his retirement years, he became an active member of the San Antonio Native Plant Society, and well into his eighties he and Edith maintained a lovely collection of native plants at their home. He dies on June 21,2011. Taken from Obituaries in Express-News on June 26, 2011
The papers of Dr. Thein Wah cover structural analysis, finite differences, beam boundary conditions and differential equations to name just a few of the subjects. He published from the 1950s to the 1980s and continued his research throughout his career. The collection of journal articles focus on structural engineering.
The journal articles are arranged in three separate folders.
South Texas Archives, James C. Jernigan Library, Texas A&M University-Kingsville
Open for Research
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Thien Wah Papers, A1995-047.XXXX, South Texas Archives, James C. Jernigan Library, Texas A&M University-Kingsville
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A1995-047 was transferred from Jernigan Library to South Texas Archives on February 23, 1995 by Roberta Pitts
Cecilia Aros Hunter processed the Josiah Cox Russell Collection, the Thien Wah Collection, the Jose Cisneros Collection and the Robert Runyon Collection in 1995 as one collection. Lori Atkins separated the four groups of materials in 2016, creating separate collections. The finding aid for Thien Wah was created by Lori Atkins and encoded into an EAD document by Daniel Thacker in 2017.