MAE Mourns Loss of Professor Walter Starkey

The department was saddened to learn of the passing of Walter L. Starkey on November 11, 2014.  Starkey was a faculty member in the former Mechanical Engineering Department from 1947-1977, and served as acting chair from 1976-1977 when he retired. He received his BSME degree from the University of Louisville in 1943, and his MS and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering from The Ohio State University in 1947 and 1950, respectively.  He taught machine design, and was known for his practical and methodical approach based on his extensive industrial experience and consulting work. 

Starkey achieved a national reputation through numerous publications and patents, and helped to enhance the department's reputation as one of the top universities in the country in machine design.  His primary research was in fatigue failure and fretting fatigue, and he received significant levels of industrial sponsorship from the late 1950's to the middle 1970's.  He received the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Machine Design Award in 1971, the highest honor in machine design awarded by ASME.  Only three people from Ohio State have received this award, including former Ohio State Professor Jack Collins, one of Starkey’s former PhD students.

In higher education, Starkey was highly respected for his masterful approach to teaching machine design.  He developed a unique approach to teaching design synthesis in the 1960's structured around practical case studies and design principles, still used today in Ohio State’s graduate course, Form Synthesis, Assembly, and Applied Stress Analysis (ME7760).  Starkey left a strong legacy in machine design and will be sadly missed by the department.