Dennis Hart Mahan

Dennis Hart Mahan

Dennis Hart Mahan (born April 2, 1802 in New York City , † September 16, 1871 in Stony Point ) was an American civil engineer and military theorist.

biography

Mahan grew up in Norfolk (Virginia) and studied from 1820 at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated in 1824 as the best of his class. He then taught mathematics for two years at West Point and was then sent by the War Ministry on a four-year (1826-1830) study trip to France, where he studied at the artillery and pioneer school in Metz with Jean-Victor Poncelet , among others . During visits to Paris he was a guest of General La Fayette , the general of the American Revolutionary War. In 1830 he was back at West Point, lecturing and in 1832 becoming a professor of engineering. He stayed that way until his death. His forced retirement had been recommended and he then committed suicide by throwing himself into the shovels of a paddle steamer on the Hudson River, on which he was en route from New York to West Point.

In 1836 he published the first American book on fortification and in 1837 the first American book on civil engineering for the cadets at West Point. His teaching was influenced by Poncelt (descriptive geometry) and Claude Louis Marie Henri Navier , whom he admired and recommended his engineering students to read.

In 1856 he reissued the Mechanical principles of engineering and architecture by Henry Moseley (1801–1872) published in London in 1843 with his own additions. He was also influential in civil engineering in the United States well beyond the US Army’s engineering corps.

He was just as influential as a teacher of strategy and tactics. He founded the Napoleon seminar in West Point, in which the campaigns of Napoleon and Frederick the Great were studied. As a military theorist, he influenced leading generals in the American Civil War on both sides (who had frequently visited West Point).

He is the father of the theorist of marine strategy Alfred Thayer Mahan .

The Mahan Hall of the Engineering Department at West Point is named in his honor. Mahan was one of the 50 founding members of the National Academy of Sciences in 1863 . In 1855 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Fonts

• A treatise on field fortification, 1836
• An elementary course of civil engineering, 1837
• Elementary Treatise on Advanced Guard, Outposts, and Detachment Service of Troops, 1847 (revised 1862)
• Summary on the Cause of Permanent Fortifications and of the Attack and Defense of Permanent Works, 1850
• Elementary treatise on industrial drawing, 1853
• A treatise on fortification drawing and stereotomy, 1865
• An Elementary Course on Military Engineering, 2 volumes, 1866/67
• Permanent Fortifications, 1867
• Descriptive geometry as applied to the drawing of fortification and stereotomy, 1870
• A treatise on civil engineering, 1878
  • His textbook from 1837 saw seven new editions edited by Mahan until Mahan's death in 1871, after his death it was edited and edited by DeVolson Wood and Mahan's son Frederick Mahan (Treatise).

literature

• Karl-Eugen Kurrer : The History of the Theory of Structures. Searching for Equilibrium , Ernst & Sohn 2018, p. 1026 (biography), ISBN 978-3-433-03229-9

Web links

• Columbian Encyclopedy (web archive)
• Biography at the ASCE