Gōda, Yoshimi, 1935-2012

Yoshimi Goda (Japanese: 合田 良実, Hepburn: Gōda Yoshimi, 24 February 1935 – 19 January 2012) was a Japanese civil engineer who made significant contributions to coastal engineering in Japan and internationally. He undertook a large volume of research on coastal engineering problems, and developed methods for the design of monolithic breakwaters. Prior to the 1950s, the concept of the significant wave (Hs), was the fundamental tool used to analyse wave behaviour, in terms of interaction with beaches and coastal engineering structures. Goda was instrumental in the move to characterise the behaviour of sea waves as a stochastic process, involving spectral and statistical analysis, which began to be gradually incorporated into coastal engineering during the 1970s and 1980s. The random wave concept is now used extensively in the engineering of maritime structures, and Goda's wave pressure formula, a design method for vertical breakwaters based on a quasi-static approach, is named for him and used worldwide.