Leo Casagrande

Leo Casagrande (born September 17, 1903 in Haidenschaft , † October 25, 1990 in Waltham (Massachusetts) ) was an Austrian-born American civil engineer specializing in geotechnical engineering.

Leo Casagrande grew up with an uncle in Vienna from 1918 and is the brother of the well-known geotechnician Arthur Casagrande . Like his brother, he studied civil engineering at the Vienna University of Technology and obtained his diploma with a thesis on hydraulic engineering. In 1928 he first worked in building construction for a construction company in Augsburg , but then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1930 , where his brother was already working for the pioneer of soil mechanics, Karl von Terzaghi . He followed Terzaghi in 1932 as his assistant at the Vienna University of Technology and received his doctorate there in 1933 on groundwater seepage flows under dams. Then he went to the TU Berlin , where he founded the Institute for Soil Mechanics and taught soil mechanics. From 1934 to 1945 he headed the soil mechanics department at the General Inspector of the German Autobahn, where for ten years he was the main person in charge of the various groundwork issues that arose. In addition, he taught at the TH Braunschweig , where he became honorary professor in 1940. He was a consultant to the General Inspector for German Roads and a close collaborator of Fritz Todt . From 1943 until the end of the war he was chief engineer at OT headquarters. 1946 to 1950 worked as a research scientist for the British at the Building Research Station in Watford . Then he went on the advice of his brother to the USA, where he was a consulting civil engineer and also visiting professor at Harvard. He worked there closely with Arthur Casagrande and Terzaghi. From 1956 he was a professor at Harvard. In 1972 he retired as a university professor. In 1969 he founded the engineering office Casagrande Consultants in Arlington (Massachusetts) with his brother Arthur and son Dirk , where he was active until 1986.

A specialty that he researched as a scientist and applied as a consulting engineer was electro osmosis for building ground improvement , drainage and slope stabilization .

With his brother Arthur he was the official advisor to the Italian government for the Leaning Tower of Pisa in the 1970s. At that time, they recommended the method of controlled soil extraction, which had been used with success from 1999, again following an idea of ​​the engineer Nabor Carillo.

Leo Casagrande was a Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering , the New York Academy of Sciences, and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

He had been married to Carla Maria Busch since 1939, with whom he had four sons and a daughter.

Web links

• Obituary in the New York Times, October 27, 1990
• Obituary at the National Academy of Engineering by Anton Tedesco, Ralph Peck

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The German builder 12/1939