Hugh Golder

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Hugh Quentin Golder (* 1911 ; † 1990 ) was a British civil engineer ( geotechnical engineering ).

Golder studied civil engineering at the University of Liverpool with a bachelor's (1932) and master's degree. He then worked at the Forest Products Research Station (where he dealt with the structural properties of wood) and from 1937 in the soil mechanics department of the Building Research Station (BRS) at Leonard Frank Cooling . Right at the beginning he investigated with Cooling the causes of the failure of the Chingford Dam (William Girling Reservoir for drinking water supply to London, the slope failure occurred during construction in July 1937) in north London, which Karl von Terzaghi and Alec Skempton also investigated. In 1942 he switched to the construction industry and went to John Mowlem & Co., where he worked under Rudolph Glossop . In 1943 he founded his own geotechnical engineering company Soil Mechanics Ltd. with Glossop, where he stayed until 1958. At the 1948 International Conference for Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering in Rotterdam, the first after the war to reflect the upswing in soil mechanics since the last Harvard conference in 1937, he presented five papers that went back to his time at BRS. In 1958 he resigned from Soil Mechanics Ltd, because he did not agree to the treatment of his friend, the well-known tunneling engineer Harold Harding , who had been released there. He went to Harvard to Arthur Casagrande , where he lectured on behalf of Terzaghi. An assignment to investigate the feasibility of a bridge to Prince Edward Island brought him into contact with Canada and in 1959 he moved to Toronto. Initially he worked as an independent consulting engineer. In 1960 he founded in Canada with Victor Milligan , Larry Soderman (from whom the proposal for the foundation came) and other Golder Associates, today a global not only geotechnical engineering office with around 7000 employees in 160 branches in 30 countries (2010). The head office is near Toronto . Initially, Golder and Milligan were the shareholders, now the company is owned by the employees.

He was one of the founders of Géotechnique magazine .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to Burland The founders of Geotechnique , Geotechnique, Volume 58, 2008, p. 327
  2. ↑ It was opened in 1997 (Confederation Bridge), with Golder and Associates providing geotechnical advice on construction
  3. ^ Golder Associates
  4. ↑ Portrait of the company and its philosophy of employee participation
personal data
SURNAME Golder, Hugh
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Golder, Hugh Quentin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British geotechnician
DATE OF BIRTH 1911
DATE OF DEATH 1990