Carl E. Grunsky

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Carl Ewald Grunsky (born April 4, 1855 in Stockton (California) , † June 9, 1934 in Berkeley (California) ) was an American civil engineer and geologist.

Grunsky went to study in Germany and, after initially studying medicine, studied civil engineering at the Polytechnic in Stuttgart. From 1900 to 1904 he was chief engineer of the city of San Francisco, where he worked out the plans for the San Francisco sewer system as early as the 1890s (realized after the earthquake of 1906). In 1904/05 he was on the Panama Canal Commission and from 1905 to 1907 he was a consulting engineer for the US Reclamation Service.

From 1932 he headed the Museum of the California Academy of Sciences and the Steinhart Aquarium.

He was advisor to the Home Secretary under President Theodore Roosevelt and on the Unemployment Commission under President Hoover.

In 1910 he received the Norman Medal . In 1911 he became secretary and in 1912 president of the California Academy of Sciences . In 1924 he became President of the Pacific Section of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and President of the American Society of Civil Engineers . In 1930/31 he was President of the American Engineering Council.

He worked as a consulting engineer on hydraulic engineering and water supply problems in California, in part with his son Eugene L. Grunsky. Another son was also an engineer.

He was one of those who investigated the 1928 rupture of the St. Francis Dam , which killed around 600 people. According to their investigation, seepage water led to the water saturation of a brittle layer of mica schist on the east side of the dam foundation, which therefore swelled and led to cracks in the dam. It was also founded there on the foothills of an old landslide. The reports of Grunsky and his son (and those of Stanford University geologist Bailey Willis) were published in the Western Construction News in 1928 . Before the disaster, Grunsky himself had found the building site to be safe, as did Stanford University geologist John C. Branner and William Mulholland , the dam's engineer and responsible for the water supply in Los Angeles, whose careers were ended when the dam broke. Although acquitted of criminal guilt in the investigation, Mulholland accepted responsibility and resigned.

In addition to problems with the water supply in California, he was also an adviser on issues relating to the regulation of the Colorado River. He also published on paleoclimatology and finance.

He is buried in Colma , San Mateo County.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matt Baume, Touring San Francisco's Historic Sewer System , Oct. 4, 2010, Streetsblog SF
  2. ^ Norris Hundley, Donald C. Jackson: Heavy Ground: William Mulholland and the St. Francis Dam Disaster , University of California Press 2015, pp. 296ff
  3. ^ Norris Hundley, Water and the West: The Colorado River Compact and the Politics of Water in the American West, Univ. of California Press 2009, p. 60
  4. ↑ Grunsky, A contribution to the climatology of the ice age, Proc. California Acad. Sci., Volume 16, 1927, No. 2
personal data
SURNAME Grunsky, Carl E.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grunsky, Carl Ewald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American civil engineer
DATE OF BIRTH April 4, 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH Stockton (California)
DATE OF DEATH June 9, 1934
Place of death Berkeley, California