Name:

Henri Gautier French 21 August 1660

Nationality:

Date of birth: Profession: Contribution:

engineer

Studied the natural slopes of soil Architect of the Coursan Bridge Designer of the Canal du Midi Engineer of the Vauban Fort

Name:

Bernard Forest de Belidor French 21 August 1660

Nationality:

Date of birth: Profession: Contribution:

military and civil engineer

He wrote numerous books dealing with mathematics, artillery, and hydraulic, civil, and military engineering. One of his engineering works, a manual of rules and tables, was reprinted until 1830. His four-volume Architecture hydraulique (173753) was the first work of its kind to apply integral calculus to practical problems; its influence for the next hundred years was international in scope.

Name:

Charles-Augustin de Coulomb French 14 June 1736

Nationality:

Date of birth: Profession:

French physicist

Contribution:

He used the principles of calculus for maxima and minima to determine the true position of the sliding surface in soil behind a retaining wall.

Name:

Claude Louis Marie Henri Navier French 10 February 1785

Nationality:

Date of birth: Profession: Contribution:

French engineer and physicist

Navier formulated the general theory of elasticity in a mathematically usable form (1821), making it available to the field of construction with sufficient accuracy for the first time. In 1819 he succeeded in determining the zero line of mechanical stress, finally correcting Galileo Galilei's incorrect results, and in 1826 he established the elastic modulus as a property of materials independent of the second moment of area. Navier is therefore often considered to be the founder of modern structural analysis. His major contribution however remains the NavierStokes equations (1822), central to fluid mechanics. His name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.

Name:

Jean-Victor Poncelet French July 1, 1788

Nationality:

Date of birth: Profession: Contribution:

French engineer and mathematician

He extended Coulombs theory by providing a graphical method for determining the magnitude of lateral earth pressure on vertical and inclined retaining walls with arbitrarily broken polygonal ground surfaces.

Name:

Alexandre Collin French 20 June 1775

Nationality:

Date of birth: Profession: Contribution:

engineer

His work forms part of a line of engineers including Vauban, Perronnet and Girard, who furnish him with opinions and experiences. This made him one of the main precursors for what was to become, in the XXth century, soil mechanics.

Name:

William John Macquorn Rankine Scottish 5 July 1820

Nationality:

Date of birth: Profession: Contribution:

civil engineer

Rankine was one of the first engineers to recognise that fatigue failures of railway axles was caused by the initiation and growth of brittle cracks. In the early 1840s he examined many broken axles, especially after the Versailles train crash of 1842 when a locomotive axle suddenly fractured.

Name:

Henri-Philibert-Gaspard Darcy French June 10, 1803

Nationality:

Date of birth: Profession: Contribution:

hydraulic engineer

He published a study on permeability of sand filters.

Name:

George Howard Darwin British 9 July 1845

Nationality:

Date of birth: Profession: Contribution:

professor of astronomy

He conducted laboratory tests to determine the overturning moment on a hinged wall retaining sand in loose and dense states of compaction.

Name:

Joseph Valentin Boussinesq French 13 March 1842

Nationality:

Date of birth: Profession: Contribution:

French mathematician and physicist

He developed the theory of stress distribution under loaded bearing areas in homogeneous, semiinfinite, elastic, and isotropic medium.

Name:

Osborne Reynolds Scottish 23 August 1842

Nationality:

Date of birth: Profession: Contribution:

prominent innovator

He illustrated the phenomenon of dilatency in sand. One of the subjects that Reynolds studied in the 1880s was the properties of granular materials, including dilatant materials.

Name:

Albert Mauritz Atterberg Swedish March 19, 1846

Nationality:

Date of birth: Profession: Contribution:

chemist and soil scientist

He created the Atterberg limits that are commonly referred to by geotechnical engineers and engineering geologists today. In Sweden he is equally known for creating the Atterberg grainsize scale, which remains the one in use.

Name:

Karl Terzaghi Austrian October 2, 1883

Nationality:

Date of birth: Profession: Contribution:

Civil engineer, Geotechnical engineer

He carried out investigations to determine the cause of failure of the 17-m high earth dam at Charmes, France.

Name:

Alec Wesley Skempton British 4 June 1914

Nationality:

Date of birth: Profession: Contribution:

writer

In situ behaviour of natural clays was of great interest to Skempton, who wrote two papers published by the Geological Society on the geological compaction of natural clays. Amongst other academic writings, he formulated concepts such as that of A and B pore water pressure coefficient which is still widely used today.

Name:

Arthur Casagrande American August 28, 1902

Nationality:

Date of birth: Profession: Contribution:

civil engineer

Renowned for his ingenious designs of soil testing apparatus and fundamental research on seepage and soil liquefaction, he is also credited for developing the soil mechanics teaching programme at Harvard University during the early 1930s that has since been modelled in many universities around the world.

Name:

Ralph Peck American June 23, 1912

Nationality:

Date of birth: Profession: Contribution:

civil engineer

During his career Peck authored over 200 publications, and served as president of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering fro m 1969 to 1973.

Name:

Jean Fontard French 1884

Nationality:

Date of birth: Profession:

engineer

Contribution:

He started modern soil mechanics with his theories of consolidation, lateral earth pressures, bearing capacity, and stability. Much research had been done on foundations, earth pressure, and stability of slopes, but Terzaghi set out to organize the results and, through research, to provide unifying concepts. The results were published in his most noted work, Erdbaumechanik.

University of Cebu
College of Engineering

Cebu City

The Men Behind the History of

Geotechnical Engineering

Submitted by: _________________________

Student

Submitted to: _________________________

Instructor

Date Submitted: _______________________