Jeremiah Edmund Bowden Jennings (4 September 1912 – 26 August 1979) was a Professor in the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits), South Africa and its head of department from 1954 until his retirement in 1976.
[3] He went to school in Newcastle (Northern Natal), later graduating from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg with a BSc degree in civil engineering in 1933.
[3] In 1935, he studied soil mechanics under Karl Terzaghi and Arthur Casagrande at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology obtaining a Master of Science degree in engineering.
In 1954, the University of Witwatersrand appointed Jere Jennings to the Kanthack Chair of Civil Engineering and head of department.
His research interests predominantly revolved around expansive clays, collapsible sands, dolomite sinkholes and tailings dams.
[5] He also contributed significantly to the early understanding of heaving clays,[6][7] helping to organise the 1st and 2nd International Conference on Expansive Soils in Texas in 1965 and 1969, respectively, and the 3rd in Haifa in 1973.
Jennings was spokesperson for South Africa at the 2nd International Conference on Soil Mechanics Foundation Engineering (ICSMFE) held in Rotterdam in 1948.