Carl Allin Cornell (September 19, 1938 – December 14, 2007) was an American civil engineer, researcher, and professor who made important contributions to reliability theory and earthquake engineering and, along with Luis Esteva,[3] developed the field of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis by publishing the seminal document of the field in 1968.

He also received the Harry Fielding Reid Medal of the Seismological Society of America, their highest honor (2001)[6] and their William B. Joyner Memorial Lecture award (2005),[7] as well as the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute's highest honor, the Housner Medal, in 2003.

[9][10][11] His wife was Elisabeth Pate-Cornell, formerly chair of Stanford's Department of Management Science and Engineering, and one of his five children is Eric Allin Cornell, Nobel Laureate in Physics.

His 1971 book, Probability, Statistics, and Decision for Civil Engineers (coauthored with Jack Benjamin), exposed an entire generation of civil and structural engineering students to the field of probabilistic modeling and decision analysis,[13][14] and remains in use for classroom curriculum to this day.

[17] He died aged 69 at Stanford University Medical Center he had been struggling with cancer for two years.