Name: Henri Gautier

Nationality: French

Date of birth: 21 August 1660

Profession: engineer

Contribution:
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

Nationality: French

Date of birth: 21 August 1660

Profession: military and civil engineer

Contribution:
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 (1737–53) 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

Nationality: French

Date of birth: 14 June 1736

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

Nationality: French

Date of birth: 10 February 1785

Profession: French engineer and physicist

Contribution:
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
Navier–Stokes equations (1822), central to fluid mechanics. His name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the
Eiffel Tower.

Name: Jean-Victor Poncelet

Nationality: French

Date of birth: July 1, 1788

Profession: French engineer and mathematician

Contribution:
He extended Coulomb’s 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

Nationality: French

Date of birth: 20 June 1775

Profession: engineer

Contribution:
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

Nationality: Scottish

Date of birth: 5 July 1820

Profession: civil engineer

Contribution:
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

Nationality: French

Date of birth: June 10, 1803

Profession: hydraulic engineer

Contribution:
He published a study on permeability of sand filters.
 Name: George Howard Darwin

Nationality: British

Date of birth: 9 July 1845

Profession: professor of astronomy

Contribution:
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

Nationality: French

Date of birth: 13 March 1842

Profession: French mathematician and physicist

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

Name: Osborne Reynolds

Nationality: Scottish

Date of birth: 23 August 1842

Profession: prominent innovator

Contribution:
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

Nationality: Swedish

Date of birth: March 19, 1846

Profession: chemist and soil scientist

Contribution:
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

Nationality: Austrian

Date of birth: October 2, 1883

Profession: Civil engineer, Geotechnical engineer

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

Name: Alec Wesley Skempton

Nationality: British

Date of birth: 4 June 1914

Profession: writer

Contribution:
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

Nationality: American

Date of birth: August 28, 1902

Profession: civil engineer

Contribution:
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

Nationality: American

Date of birth: June 23, 1912

Profession: civil engineer

Contribution:
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

Nationality: French

Date of birth: 1884

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: _______________________