Famous Structural Engineers

Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was a French civil engineer and architect. He graduated from the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures. Eiffel made his name with bridges for the French railway network, including the Garabit viaduct. He is best known for the Eiffel Tower, built for the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, France. After retiring from engineering, Eiffel researched meteorology and aerodynamics, making important contributions to both fields.

Captain James Buchanan Eads was an American civil engineer and inventor who held more than 50 patents.

Jörg Schlaich, born in 1934, is a German structural engineer. He is known internationally for designing bridges, long-span roofs, and complex structures. Schlaich co-founded the firm schlaich bergermann partner. He is the brother of architect Brigitte Schlaich Peterhans.

Peter Rice was an Irish structural engineer. He was born at 52 Castle Road, Dundalk, County Louth. He spent his childhood in Dundalk, Gyles' Quay, and Inniskeen. Peter Rice received his primary degree from the Queen's University of Belfast. He also spent a year at Imperial College, London. He studied Aeronautical Engineering before switching to Civil Engineering. Ove Arup & Partners hired him; his first job involved the roof of the Sydney Opera House. He married Sylvia Watson in 1965 and they had one son and three daughters. Jonathan Glancey in his ob

Fazlur Rahman Khan was a Bangladeshi-American structural engineer and architect. He initiated important structural systems for skyscrapers. Khan is considered the father of tubular designs for high-rises and a pioneer in computer-aided design. He designed the Willis Tower, the second-tallest building in the United States, and the 100-story John Hancock Center. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat named their lifetime achievement medal after him.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, FRS, was an English mechanical and civil engineer. He built dockyards, the Great Western Railway, numerous bridges, and tunnels. He also built a series of steamships, including the first propeller-driven transatlantic vessel. Brunel's designs changed public transport and modern engineering. Although some of Brunel's projects lacked success, they often offered innovative solutions to difficult engineering problems. During his short career, Brunel achieved many engineering firsts, including assisting in the building of the first tunnel under a navigable river.

Robert "Bob" Shaw (31 December 1931 – 11 February 1996) was a science fiction writer and fan from Northern Ireland. He gained recognition for his originality and wit. Shaw won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 1979 and 1980. His short story "Light of Other Days" was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1967. His novel The Ragged Astronauts received a nomination in 1987.

Santiago Calatrava Valls is a Spanish architect, structural engineer, sculptor, and painter. He maintains offices in New York City, Doha, and Zürich, where he lives.

Dr. Lynn S. Beedle was an American structural engineer. He founded and directed the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Beedle designed and built skyscrapers. The New York Times called him "an expert on tall buildings". Beedle also made Lehigh University a research center for civil and structural engineering through his studies on steel structures. In 1972, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to steel structures research and design practice.

Fritz Leonhardt (12 July 1909 – 30 December 1999) was a German structural engineer. He made major contributions to 20th-century bridge engineering, focusing on the development of cable-stayed bridges. His book Bridges: Aesthetics and Design is known throughout the bridge engineering community.

Othmar Hermann Ammann was a Swiss-American structural engineer. His designs include the George Washington Bridge, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, and Bayonne Bridge. He also directed the planning and construction of New York City's Lincoln Tunnel.

Félix Candela Outeriño was a Spanish-Mexican architect known for his role in developing Mexican architecture and structural engineering. Candela’s major architectural contribution involved developing thin shells made of reinforced concrete, known as cascarones. Félix Candela died in 1997 at age 87 in North Carolina.

Hardy Cross (1885–1959) was an American structural engineer. He developed the moment distribution method for analyzing statically indeterminate structures. This method was used from about 1935 until 1960, when other methods replaced it.

Dr Edmund Cadbury Hambly (28 September 1942 – 28 March 1995) was a British structural engineer. He was born in Seer Green, near Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, in 1942. Hambly attended Eton College before studying engineering tripos at Cambridge University. He earned a first-class honours degree and won the prize in structural engineering. As a fellow of Emmanuel College, he completed his doctorate while working on soil deformation models. He married Elizabeth Gorham, with whom he had three daughters and a son.

Cecil Balmond OBE is a Sri Lankan–British designer, artist, and writer. In 1968, Balmond joined Ove Arup & Partners and became deputy chairman. In 2000, he founded the design and research group AGU (Advanced Geometry Unit). He holds the Paul Philippe Cret Chair at PennDesign as Professor of Architecture. Balmond is also the founding director of the Non Linear Systems Organization, a material and structural research unit. He served as Kenzo Tange Visiting Design Critic at Harvard Graduate School of Architecture (2000) and Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor at Yale University.

Eduardo Torroja y Miret was a Spanish structural engineer and pioneer in concrete shell structures. His first major project was the Tempul cable-stayed aqueduct in 1926, located in Guadalete, Jerez de la Frontera, where he used prestressed girders. He gained recognition for the concrete shell-roof at the Algeciras Market Hall. Torroja designed a thin-shell water tower in Fedala and the roof of the hippodrome "Zarzuela," shaped as a hyperboloid of revolution. He also applied steel effectively, as seen in the roof of the Football Stadium in Barcelona.

Émile Nouguier was a French civil engineer and architect. He co-designed the Eiffel Tower, built from 1887 to 1889 for the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, France. He also designed the Garabit viaduct, the highest structure at the time, near Ruynes-en-Margeride, Cantal, France. Nouguier oversaw the Faidherbe Bridge over the Sénégal River in Senegal. In 1861, he attended and graduated from the École Polytechnique in Paris. He joined the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris in 1862 and graduated in 1865 as a mining construction engineer.

Frei Paul Otto was a German architect and structural engineer. He specialized in lightweight structures, including tensile and membrane systems. Otto designed the roof for the Olympic Stadium in Munich for the 1972 Summer Olympics. He won the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 2006 and received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2015.

Pier Luigi Nervi was an Italian engineer. He studied at the University of Bologna and qualified in 1913. From 1946 to 1961, Dr. Nervi taught as a professor of engineering at Rome University. He is known as a structural engineer and architect for his innovative use of reinforced concrete.

John Ochsendorf is a structural engineer and construction historian. Since 2002, he has served as an associate professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ochsendorf became a MacArthur Fellow in 2008.

Maurice Koechlin was a Swiss structural engineer.

Eugène Freyssinet was a French structural and civil engineer. He pioneered prestressed concrete. Freyssinet was born in Objat, Corrèze, France. He worked at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, France, designing several bridges before World War I intervened. His tutors included Charles Rabut. He served in the French Army from 1904–1907 and again from 1914-1918 as a road engineer. His most significant early bridge was the three span Pont le Veurdre near Vichy, built in 1911. The 72.5 metre spans were the longest constructed at that time.

Professor Sir Edmund Happold, also known as Ted Happold, was a structural engineer and founder of Buro Happold.

Sir Ove Nyquist Arup, CBE, MICE, MIStructE, is known as Ove Arup. He was an Anglo-Danish engineer who founded Arup Group Limited. This multinational corporation offers engineering, design, planning, project management, and consulting services for building systems. Ove Arup is considered one of the foremost architectural structural engineers of his time.

Michael P. Collins is a Canadian structural engineer. His research focuses on designing and evaluating reinforced and prestressed concrete buildings, bridges, nuclear containment structures, and offshore oil platforms.

Dr. Michel Virlogeux FREng is a French structural engineer and bridge specialist.

David Bernard Steinman was an American structural engineer. He designed the Mackinac Bridge and many other bridges; he also published books. He grew up in lower Manhattan, New York City. Steinman sought to impact the Brooklyn Bridge that he lived under. In 1906, he earned a bachelor's degree from City College. He obtained a Master of Arts from Columbia University in 1909 and a Doctorate in 1911. The Franklin Institute's Louis E. Levy Medal was awarded to him in 1957. David Steinman built bridges in the United States, Thailand, England, Portugal, Italy, Brazil, and Hai.

Tung Hua Lin (May 26, 1911 – June 18, 2007) was a Chinese-American aerospace and structural engineer. He designed China's first twin engine aircraft during World War II.

William Ian Liddell (born 1938) CBE FREng FIStructE Hon FRIBA is a structural engineer. He designed London's Millennium Dome and was one of the founding partners of Buro Happold. He serves as a Royal Academy Visiting Professor of Engineering Design at Cambridge University School of Engineering and is now a consultant for Buro Happold. He studied mechanical sciences at St John's College, Cambridge, and obtained a diploma in concrete structures from Imperial College, London. He served as the project engineer for the Sydney Opera House, playing a key role in determining the formfinding of the iconic roofs.

Jacque Fresco (March 13, 1916 – May 18, 2017) was an American futurist and self-described social engineer. He worked in various industrial design positions. Fresco wrote and lectured on sustainable cities, energy efficiency, natural-resource management, cybernetic technology, automation, and science's role in society. He directed the Venus Project and advocated for a global socioeconomic system he called a "resource-based economy".

Frank Newby (March 26, 1926 – May 10, 2001) was a leading structural engineer in the 20th century. He worked with architects like Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya, Eero Saarinen, Cedric Price, and James Stirling. Newby also worked for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM). Other engineers he worked with included Ove Arup and Felix Samuely.

Ramesh Chandra, born 1939/40, founded the Indian real estate company Unitech.

Carl Culmann (July 10, 1821 – December 9, 1881) was a German structural engineer. He was born in Bad Bergzabern, Rhenish Palatinate, Germany. His father, a pastor, tutored him at home before he entered the military engineering school at Metz for the École Polytechnique. Typhoid attacked Culmann's ambitions. After recovering, he attended the Karlsruhe Polytechnic School. In 1841, he joined the Bavarian civil service as an apprentice engineer designing railroad bridges.

Povl Ahm CBE FICE FREng (September 26, 1926 – May 15, 2005) was a structural engineer and former chairman of Ove Arup & Partners.

William Frazier Baker, also Bill Baker (born October 9, 1953), is an American structural engineer. He engineered the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building. He currently serves as a structural engineering partner in the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP (SOM).

William George Nicholson Geddes CBE DSc FRSE FEng (July 29, 1913 – November 10, 1993) was a Scottish civil engineer.

Tung-Yen Lin (Chinese: 林同棪; pinyin: Lín Tóngyán; November 14, 1912 – November 15, 2003) was a structural engineer. He pioneered the standardization of prestressed concrete.

Werner Sobek is a German architect and structural engineer.

Franz Dischinger (8 October 1887 - 9 January 1953) was a pioneering German civil and structural engineer. He developed the modern cable-stayed bridge. Dischinger also pioneered prestressed concrete, patenting external prestressing (where tendons are not encased in concrete) in 1934. After completing Gymnasium in Karlsruhe, Germany, Dischinger studied at the Technical University in Karlsruhe and earned a degree in building engineering in 1913. He then began working for Dycker.

Nabih Youssef, S.E., F.A.S.C.E, is an American structural engineer known for earthquake engineering.

Anthony James Fitzpatrick FREng HonFRIBA (1951–26 July 2003) was an eminent structural engineer and director of Arup.

Joseph Baermann Strauss was an American structural engineer. He was the chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge.