FENVES
STEVEN JOSEPH
Of Chevy Chase, MD, longtime resident of Pittsburgh and Mt. Lebanon, emeritus University Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, died on December 23, 2025, at the age of 94. He was an engineering researcher and educator, an early innovator in the use of computers for civil engineering, and a survivor of the Holocaust. While in Pittsburgh, he helped establish the city's Holocaust Survivors Organization, serving as its president for several years.
Steven Fenves was born on June 6, 1931, into a Hungarian-speaking Jewish family in Subotica, Yugoslavia (now Serbia). His father, Louis was, editor-in-chief of a Hungarian- language newspaper; his mother, Klara (neé Gereb), was a graphic artist and illustrator. Between 1941 and 1945 Steven survived two occupations, two ghettos, three train rides in sealed boxcars, three concentration camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, and a 100 km death march to Buchenwald, where he was liberated by U.S. Army soldiers on April 11, 1945. His mother perished in Auschwitz.
In 1945 Steven Fenves was repatriated to Yugoslavia where he was reunited with his older sister Eszti, who had been liberated from Bergen-Belsen, and their father, who returned from a forced-labor coal mine in Silesia. Louis, broken physically and emotionally, died in Subotica in February 1946. Steven and Eszti escaped from Yugoslavia in 1947, living for three years in Paris, where Steven completed his high-school baccalaureate. In 1950 he and his sister immigrated to the United States. Two years later, Steven was drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed in West Germany as part of the U.S. Occupation Forces. He became a naturalized US citizen in 1954 and began his civil engineering studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on the GI Bill.
Steven met his wife-to-be, Norma (neé Horwitz), in Chicago in 1954. They were married the following year, starting the loving and mutually supportive relationship that characterized their 70-year-long marriage. Steven received his bachelor's degree in 1957, three weeks before their first child, Gregory, was born. Three more children, Carol, Peter and Laura, followed, as Steven obtained his master's and Ph.D. degrees and rose in academic rank from instructor to professor of civil engineering at UIUC.
In 1962-63, while on sabbatical at M.I.T, he along with several colleagues developed a computer program, named STRESS, that has been widely credited with facilitating the transition of structural engineering into the computer age. In 1971, Steven was recruited by Carnegie Mellon University, where he served, first, as the Head of its civil engineering department and, later, as one of its University Professors. His research and teaching from the early 70's to his retirement in 1999 focused on computer support of engineering design and the exploration of newly emergent computer science concepts, including artificial intelligence, in engineering design and problem-solving. From 1999 to 2009 Steven held the position of Guest Researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD.
Beginning in the 1970's Steven spoke in schools and community centers about what happened to him and his family during the Second World War. After fully retiring in 2009, he dedicated many hours to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC as a survivor-volunteer so others would learn from his experience in the Holocaust.
Among Steven's awards are the Huber, the Moisseiff, and the Winter Awards from the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the College of Engineering at UIUC, and the Teare and Doherty Award from CMU. An Honorary Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Steven was elected to the National Academy of Engineering at age 45 and served the National Academies for nearly 50 years.
He is survived by his wife; four children and their spouses; seven grandchildren and their spouses; and six great grandchildren. Memorial contributions may be made to the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, www.ushmm.org, or the Steven J. Fenves Graduate Travel Fund at Carnegie Mellon, https://cee.engineering.cmu.edu/about-us/giving.html.