Alfred Stucky

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alfred Stucky
Grande-Dixence dam

Alfred Stucky (born March 16, 1892 in La Chaux-de-Fonds , † September 6, 1969 in Lausanne ; resident in Oberneunforn ) was a Swiss civil engineer , known as a dam designer .

life and work

Stucky was the son of a hotelier. He studied from 1911 to 1915 at the ETH Zurich , where he received his doctorate on dams under Arthur Rohn in 1920 ( Étude sur les barrages arqués ). While still a student, he worked as an engineer with railway construction (for example the line Zweisimmen - Lenk and on Lake Brienz ) and river straightening. After completing his studies, he worked at Dyckerhoff & Widmann in Dortmund and Gabriel Narutowicz in Zurich and then joined the Gruner engineering office in Basel (headed by Heinrich Eduard Gruner ), where he worked on dam construction. In 1920/21 he was involved in the construction of the arch dam at Lac de Montsalvens . He proposed a parabolic shape and developed calculation methods for dams, showing a pragmatic approach. One of his favorite sayings was: "A badly designed dam remains bad even if it has been calculated exactly, and a good design remains good even if it is badly calculated." and in his inaugural lecture in Lausanne in 1938, he declared that an engineer is first and foremost a person of action . In 1926 he was invited by Jean Landry to give lectures (as a lecturer) at the later École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where he received a full professorship in 1938 (full professor). In 1928 he set up a hydraulic engineering test laboratory and in 1935 a foundation engineering laboratory. In 1940 he succeeded Jean Landry as Rector of EPFL, which he remained until 1963. During his time as rector, he founded the architecture department there in 1942 and managed the transition from EPFL to a technical university. In 1943 he was director of the newly founded engineering school in the canton of Vaud .

In 1928 he was one of the five members of the first Swiss dam commission founded by Heinrich Gruner.

In 1926 he founded his own engineering office. From 1915 until his death he was involved in the construction of 38 dams and dams (26 of which he planned and supervised construction), 20 of them in Switzerland, others in North Africa, Iran, Greece and Romania. His dams include the Grande Dixence (built 1953–1961), Mauvoisin (1951–1958), Moiry (1954–1958), Luzzone (inaugurated in 1962).

He was married to Nelly Matthys since 1916. His son Jean-Pierre Stucky (1917–1991) continued his father's work in his engineering office and was also professor of hydraulic engineering in Lausanne.

A square in Lausanne is named after him. In 1955 he received an honorary doctorate from the ETH Zurich.

literature

  • Maurice Cosandey: Alfred Stucky - Un grand ingénieur et un réalisateur authentique. Société d'études en matière d'histoire économique, Meilen 1992 ( Pionniers suisses de l'économie et de la technique. Vol. 10).
  • Daniel Vischer Wasserbauer and hydraulic engineer in Switzerland , 2001

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Swiss construction newspaper . Vol. 87 (1969), p. 97 ( online ).
  2. ^ Bruno Meyer Alfred Stucky , Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz
  3. ↑ «Un barrage mal conçu reste un barrage mal conçu, même s'il est bien calculé; un barrage bien conçu reste un barrage bien conçu, même s'il est mal calculé. " After Giovanni Lombardi , calculation of arch dams, French, pdf .
  4. ^ "L'ingénieur est avant tout un réalisateur, un homme d'action." Biography of Stucky, french, pdf .
  5. ^ History of the Swiss Dam Committee ( memento from June 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) by Marc Balissat.
personal data
SURNAME Stucky, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss civil engineer
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH La Chaux-de-Fonds
DATE OF DEATH 6th September 1969
Place of death Lausanne