Jean Kerisel

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Jean Lehuérou Kerisel (born November 18, 1908 in Saint-Brieuc , Bretagne , † January 22, 2005 in Paris ) was a leading French geotechnical engineer . Later he also earned a reputation as a researcher of historical building methods, for example in Egypt at the pyramids.

Life

Kerisel came from a family of Breton lawyers and studied at the École polytechnique (graduation 1928) and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (ENPC, graduation 1933). From 1933 to 1940 he worked as an engineer in road and bridge construction in Orléans . As the son-in-law of the well-known civil engineer and geotechnical expert Albert Caquot , he began to be interested in soil mechanics and received his doctorate in geotechnics at the Sorbonne in 1935 . During the Second World War he was an officer in the pioneers and was awarded the Croix de guerre . From 1944 to 1951 he worked as director under the ministers Raoul Dutry and Eugène Claudius-Petit in the French Ministry of Reconstruction (Commissariat à la Reconstruction) on the reconstruction of French cities after the war damage, whereby he also supported modern architecture such as that of Le Corbusier .

From 1952 he started his own business as head of an engineering office for geotechnical engineering (Simecsol), which he headed until 1979. At the same time he was Professor (Professeur titulaire) for soil mechanics at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées from 1951 to 1969, where he trained numerous geotechnical engineers in France. With Caquot he wrote a well-known soil mechanics textbook, which was also translated into German, and published widely used tables on earth pressure, earth resistance and soil bearing capacity.

After relinquishing the management of Simecsol, he continued to work as a consulting engineer, for example at the Metro in Cairo . With Caquot, he also proposed a method of moving the temple of Abu Simbel , which was threatened by the filling up of the Aswan Dam, in Egypt (the temple was eventually relocated under German leadership). There he began to be interested in ancient buildings in Egypt and wrote several books about them. Among other things, he developed a theory of where the actual burial chamber in the Great Pyramid of Cheops could be and how the pyramid could have been built. He also wrote a biography of his teacher and father-in-law, Caquot.

He dealt extensively with geotechnical problems of historical buildings (subject of his Rankine Lecture) and in general with historical construction technology, for example with the cathedral of Beauvais, which partially collapsed during construction in the Middle Ages . He was also a consultant for the Leaning Tower in Pisa on several occasions .

In 1968/69 he was President of the Société des Ingénieurs Civils de France. From 1969 to 1973 he was President of the French Committee for Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering (Comité Français de Mécanique des Sols et Travaux de Fondations) and then from 1974 to 1979 President of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering (ISSMFE). In 1975 he was a Rankine Lecturer ( Old structures in relation to soil conditions , Geotechnique, Volume 25, 1975, pp. 433-483). He was commander of the Legion of Honor and honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1973). He received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Liège (1975) and Naples (1996). In 1970 he received an honorary professorship.

In 1931 he married the daughter (Suzy) of Caquot.

Examples of the work of his engineering office Simecsol

  • Establishment of the port of Houphouët Boigny in Abidjan (1957), the second port in Abidjan (1967) and the port of Onitsha in Nigeria
  • Foundation of the 8.7 km long Maracaibo Bridge in Venezuela (1958–1962)
  • Foundation of the Seine bridge Pont de l'Alma in Paris in 1970 (the largest Seine bridge in Paris)
  • the dam of Arzal at the mouth of the river Vilaine in Brittany (1965-1970)
  • Advising on the construction of the metro in Paris, as well as those in Lyon, Marseille and Cairo for over 20 years.
  • the Fourvière tunnel near Lyon and the Bielsa Pyrenees tunnel .
  • Port construction in Sibari, Italy (1970 to 1987) in Calabria (near Cosenza ) and in Douala ( Cameroon )
  • Creation for the Usinor steel works in Dunkirk , the nuclear power plants in Gravelines and Belleville on the Loire , for the high-rise complexes in La Défense and the Tour Montparnasse in Paris.
  • Expert opinion on behalf of the French state for the railway accident in the Vierzy tunnel near Soissons on June 16, 1972 with 108 deaths.

literature

Fonts

  • Caquot, Kerisel Traité de Mécanique des Sols , Gauthier-Villars 1949, new editions 1956, 1966, German translation Fundamentals of Soil Mechanics , Springer 1967 (also translated into Spanish, Romanian, Japanese)
  • Caquot, Kerisel Tables de butée, de poussée et de force portante des fondations , Gauthier-Villars 1949 (earth pressure tables ). New editions 1973 (with Elie Absi) and Presses ENPC / Balkema Rotterdam 1990 and 2003
  • Glissements de terrains, Abaques . Dunod, Paris 1973
  • Cours de Mécanique des Sols , Presses ENPC 1963/64 (first 1950/51)
  • Down to Earth, Foundations Past and Present, the Invisible Art of the Builder , Balkema, Rotterdam, 1987, 1991
  • La Pyramide à travers les âges. Mythes et religions , Presses de l'ENPC, Paris 1991
  • Génie et démesure d'un pharaon: Khéops , Stock, Paris 1996, 2001
  • Le Nile: l'espoir et la colère. De la sagesse à la démesure , Presses ENPC, Paris 1999 (English edition: The Nile and its Masters, Past, Present, Future, Source of Hope and Anger , Balkema, Rotterdam 2001).
  • Pierres et Hommes, des Pharaons à nos jours , Presses de l'ENPC, Paris 2004 (English edition Of Stones and Man from the Pharaohs to the present day , Taylor & Francis (London) / Balkema, 2005)
  • Albert Caquot, Créateur et Précurseur , Eyrolles, Paris 1978
  • Albert Caquot (1881–1976), Savant, soldat et bâtisseur , Presses de l'ENPC, Paris, 2001.
  • a biography of Caquots by Kerisel is online (French)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ initially technical director (Directeur Technique), then planning and construction director. After 1951 he was Honorary Director of the Commissariat for Reconstruction
personal data
SURNAME Kerisel, Jean
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kerisel, Jean Lehuérou (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French engineer for foundation engineering and soil mechanics
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Brieuc , Brittany
DATE OF DEATH January 22, 2005
Place of death Paris