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Obituaries

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Bob Whitman, MIT professor and civil engineer

By Michele Richinick

 |  Globe Staff  

  March 05, 2012

Robert V. Whitman became fascinated with how the world works when he was a child and brought that enthusiasm to students he taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “He was a unique teacher. He would introduce a subject matter and get us excited to discover knowledge on our own,’’ said Mishac Yegian, a Northeastern University professor who studied with Dr. Whitman at MIT. “He had a self-discovery mode of teaching.’’ Dr. Whitman had served as president of Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.

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