Journal of Earth Engineering (JEE)

Vol. 2, No. 1, (2017)

Biography
ISSN: 2476-4825

Karl Von Terzaghi

He was born the first child of Army Lieutenant-
Colonel Anton von Terzaghi, of Italian origin, and Amalia
Eberle in Prague, in 1883. Upon his father's retirement from
the army, the family moved to Graz, Austria. At 10,
Terzaghi was sent to a military boarding school, where he
developed an interest in astronomy and geography. At age
fourteen, Terzaghi entered a different military school,
in Hranice, the Crown of Bohemia. He was an excellent
student, especially in geometry and mathematics, and
graduated with honours at 17. Terzaghi entered
the Technical University in Graz to study mechanical
engineering in 1900, where he also developed an interest in
theoretical mechanics and he was there until 1904. He
returned to the university for one year and combined the
study of geology with courses on subjects such as highway
and railway engineering and was awarded a doctorate
in engineering by the same institution in 1911.
His first job was as a junior design engineer for the
firm Adol Baron Pittle in Vienna. The firm was becoming
more involved in the relatively new field of hydroelectric
power generation and Karl became involved in the
geological problems. His responsibilities quickly increased,
and he was already managing a construction site, workers,
and the design and construction of steel-reinforced
structures in 1908. He went on with great success to an even
more chaotic project in St. Petersburg. For six months
in Russia, he developed some novel graphical methods for
the design of industrial tanks, which he also submitted as a
thesis for his PhD at the university. Karl went to the United
States in 1912.
He undertook an
engineering tour of major
dam construction sites in the
West of the United States. He
returned to Austria again in December 1913. When the world war
one was began, he found himself into the army as an officer
directing a 250-man engineering battalion after that they increased
to 1,000 men. He served in the Austrian Air Force but in 1916 he
accepted a position as a professor at the Royal Ottoman College of
Engineering in Istanbul (now Istanbul Technical University, ITU
since 1773). When the war was over, he took a post (1918–25) with
Robert College, a U.S. institution, also in Istanbul.
He set up a laboratory test for soil mechanics and worked on his
measurements and his forces analysis on retaining walls were first
published in English in 1919, and they were quickly recognized as
an important new contribution to the scientific understanding of the fundamental behaviour of
soils.

Journal of Earth Engineering (JEE), Vol. 2, No. 1, (2017), I-III.

II Karl Von Terzaghi

After the war, he was focused to resign his post at the University but managed to find a new
post at Robert College in Istanbul, where he switched his teaching language from French to
English and again constructed a laboratory by the most primary equipment. Now, he studied
various experimental and quantitative aspects of the permeability of soils to water and was able to
work out some theories to explain the observations. In 1924 he published much of it in
his Erdbaumechanik (Soil Mechanics), which was a wonderful engineering text book. That
resulted in a job offer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which he
immediately accepted in
1925. Arthur Casagrande,
another pioneer of soil
mechanics scientists, worked
as Terzaghi's private
assistant at MIT in 1926
until 1932.
He was good looks and
evident was very attractive
to women. In 1928, he met
the young Harvard doctoral
student in geology, Ruth
Dogget and fell in love. That
year, Terzaghi was finally
decided to return to Europe.
He accepted a chair at the
Vienna Technische
Hochshule in the winter of
1929. He married Ruth and who became his editor and collaborator as well.
He began his sabbatical with a short trip to consult with Fritz Todt (Reich Minister for
Armaments and Ammunition) and the architects of the proposed great plans for immense buildings
at the Nazi's Party Day Rally site in Nuremberg. That led to a conflict over the best way to lay a
sound foundation, which led to a discussion with Hitler himself, who took an intense interest in all
details of the architecture. Terzaghi then returned to America, where he gave a plenary lecture at
the International Conference on Soil Mechanics at Harvard University (the event led to the
establishment of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering;
Terzaghi was its first president). He made a lecture tour of many other universities but discovered
that prospects for employment were dim. He returned to Vienna in September 1936, shortly after
the birth of his first son Eric. In 1938, he immigrated to the United States and took up a post at
Harvard University.
By the end of the war, he had consulted on the Chicago subway system, Newport News
Shipways construction and raising
the Normandy, among others. He was
awarded the Frank P. Brown Medal in
1946 and remained as a part-timer
at Harvard University until his
retirement in 1953, at the age of 70. In
July 1954, he became the chairman of
the Consulting Board for the
construction of the Egypt’s Aswan Dam
and he continued to consult on various
hydroelectric projects, especially
in British Columbia. The Mission Dam
in British Columbia, Canada, was
renamed in his honour as the Terzaghi
Dam in 1965. He won the Norman
Journal of Earth Engineering (JEE), Vol. 2, No. 1, (2017), I-III.
Biography III

Medal of ASCE four times (1930, 1943, 1946, and 1955). He was given nine honorary doctorate
degrees from universities in eight different countries.
He died in 1963 in Winchester, Massachusetts and his ashes were interred in South
Waterford, Maine, near "Bear's Corner".
Professor Goodman says "He was the great professor of geotechnical engineering of his day,
with regular appointments first in Istanbul, then at MIT, Vienna, and Harvard, as well as courses
of lectures in Berlin, Texas and Illinois".
Terzaghi’s publications had a wide range such as: The first soils and rocks classification
methods; capillary phenomena in soils; the theory and documentation of consolidation and
settlement; piping and its prevention; design and construction of gravity and concrete dams on all
kinds of foundations;
anchorages for suspension
bridges in soils; field and
laboratory measurement of
pore pressures and
soil properties; design of
drainage wells and tunnels;
design to avoid scour of
river and waterfront
structures; earth pressure
variations on retaining
walls; pile foundations; soil
improvement by
compaction, pile-driving,
grouting and incorporation
of geotextiles; soil and rock
tunnelling; soil foundation
bearing capacity;
engineering geology;
sinkhole formation and
collapse; regional
subsidence due to oil-field
operations; and landslides.
It can be say that the
most important book in soil
mechanics history is:
Theoretical Soil Mechanics,
by Terzaghi in 1943 with
John Wiley and Sons and it
has been revised by Karl
Terzaghi and Ralph B. Peck, in 1948, entitled "Soil Mechanics in Engineering Practice" by John
Wiley and Sons. The new book revised for second edition by Ralph B. Peck in 1967 after Terzaghi
and the third edition by Ralph B. Peck and Gholamreza Mesri, in 1996.

References
Das, B.M., 2010, "Principles of Geotechnical Engineering", Cengage Learning.
De Boer, R., 2005, "The Engineer and the Scandal-a piece of scientific history", Springer Verlag.
Goodman, R.E., 1999, "Karl Terzaghi", American Society of Civil Engineers.
Plath, A.S., 1975, "Letter's Home by Sylvia Plath--Correspondence 1950-1963", Harper and Row.
www.issmge.org, "History of the ISSMGE", ISSMGE, Retrieved 22 July 2013.
www.wikipedia.org, "Karl von Terzaghi", Retrieved 14 March 2017.
www.geoeneer.org, "Karl Terzaghi's Legacy in Geotechnical Engineering", Retrieved 2 April 2017.

Journal of Earth Engineering (JEE), Vol. 2, No. 1, (2017), I-III.