Prof. Dr. Ragıp Erdöl

I have been wanting to write about this for a long time.

However, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

My professor from university, Prof. Dr. Ragıp Erdöl, who passed away last year.

He was from Sürmene.

He was my professor for the Statics course when I entered the Civil Engineering Department at KTÜ in 1990.

Later, he also taught my Dynamics, Strength of Materials, and Structural Analysis courses.

When we started the faculty, we were divided into two groups: odd and even numbers.

I was in the odd-numbered group.

I didn't quite understand it at the time, but one of the upperclassmen told me I was very lucky.

Because Professor Ragıp taught the classes for the odd-numbered students.

Later, when I got to know Professor Ragıp closely, I was also very glad that I was an odd number.

For students fresh out of high school, the Statics course was a world of its own.

Total loads, verticals, horizontals, moments, nodes, and terminology I had never heard before.

Then came the even tougher Dynamics course.

Concepts and formulas that were nearly impossible to understand, such as point masses and their kinetics, impulse-momentum, linear momentum, and planar kinematics of rigid bodies.

Professor Ragıp taught me all of them.

Since Professor Ragıp was also a vice-rector, he was rarely around outside of class.

For that reason, I still remember how he would teach non-stop for three hours, and the effort he put in to ensure every single student learned.

He would sweat, and his clothes would be covered in chalk dust.

I even remember his look of astonishment as if it were yesterday, when he asked, "Did you understand?" at the end of those three hours, and a friend from Kayseri replied, "I didn't understand anything at all."

He never took offense; he would explain the three-hour lesson again in a short time until the student from Kayseri understood.

We would also listen with rapt attention, hoping to grasp the points we hadn't understood.

Professor Ragıp graduated from ITU when there were only a handful of universities in Turkey, and he completed his doctorate at the same school.

Afterward, he came to his hometown of Trabzon and began his academic career at KTÜ.

In other words, he was "crème de la crème," meaning "the smartest of the smart."

I am especially saddened by the loss of a professor who was a role model, remembered not only for his intelligence and technical knowledge but also for his conscience.

Professor Ragıp was among the top professors from whom I learned what it means to be a man of character.

May he rest in peace; he was instrumental in the training of thousands of engineers like me and in the development of modern Turkey.