Erik H. VanMarcke

It is with deep sadness and heavy hearts that we share the news of the passing of Erik VanMarcke, who died on July 7.
Erik was born in 1941 in Menen, Belgium. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Leuven and a doctorate in Civil Engineering from MIT in 1970. He joined the MIT faculty soon after and, in 1985, moved to Princeton, where he served as Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering until his retirement in 2013.
Erik was a pioneering scholar in the fields of random fields, structural reliability, and risk assessment. His landmark book Random Fields: Analysis and Synthesis is foundational to probabilistic approaches across scientific and engineering disciplines. The ideas and methods Erik developed in this work have been widely applied in earthquake engineering, wind engineering, and coastal engineering. His influential research earned him numerous honors, including the Alfred M. Freudenthal Medal, the Raymond C. Reese and Walter L. Huber Research Prizes of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Distinguished Probabilistic Methods Educator Award of the Society of Automotive Engineers, and election to the Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium.
Erik's deep curiosity led him to explore a remarkably broad and diverse range of research areas. He extended the application of his theory of random fields to cosmology; his great enthusiasm for the topic led to his most recent book Quantum Origins of Cosmic Structure and continued research throughout the latter part of his career and through his retirement.
Son of the late Louis E. and Rachel (VanHollebeke) Vanmarcke, he is survived by his wife Lynne Durkee, 3 children and their spouses Lieven and Manisha VanMarcke, Anneke and Edward Forzani, Kristien and Damon Webber, 8 grandchildren Thomas, Joseph, William, Christopher, Dax, Ian, Jayson and Anya, 3 step-daughters, 5 sisters Frieda Vanmarcke-Van Belle, Rosa Vanmarcke-Gilissen, Hilde Vanmarcke-Schoonjans, Christa Vanmarcke-Verhaeghe and Gerda Vanmarcke-Cauwenberghs, and their families.
The funeral service will be held at 10am on July 18, 2025 at the Mather Hodge Funeral Home, 40 Vandeventer Avenue, Princeton.
Burial will follow in the Princeton Cemetery.
A Visitation will be held 6:00-9:00 pm on July 17, 2025 at the funeral home.
A Princeton University departmental gathering to commemorate Erik will be held at the end of August.
In lieu of flowers memorial contributions may be made to The Institute for Advance Study.