Ralph Freeman (engineer, 1911)

Sir Ralph Freeman (born February 3, 1911 - August 24, 1998 ) was a British engineer who u. a. became famous for his design for the Humber Bridge .

Sir Ralph Freeman's son (engineer, 1880) attended Uppingham School, Rutland and Worcester College, Oxford. He worked on bridges in South Africa and Rhodesia where he met his wife, Joan Rose. In 1939 he returned to England and worked for Freeman Fox & Partners (named after his father the previous year; now Hyder Consulting ). During World War II, he served in the Engineer and Logistic Staff Corps of the Royal Engineers and developed military suspension bridges. In 1953 he was promoted to major. He then worked again at Freeman Fox & Partners until 1979, where he became a partner in 1947 and a senior partner in 1963. He participated in the planning of the M2 and M5 motorway and was involved in the planning of the Auckland Harbor Bridge , the Forth Road Bridge , the Severn Bridge , the Erskine Bridge and the first Bosphorus Bridge . The Humber Bridge is seen as the culmination of his work .

Ralph Freeman had been a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers since 1946 and sat on its board of directors from 1951 to 1955 and from 1957 to 1961. Between 1961 and 1966 he was vice-president and from 1966 to 1967 president of the ICE. He was Chairman of the Association of Consulting Engineers from 1975 to 1976 and President of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers in 1978. In 1970 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor .

His son Anthony (better known as Ralph) died a month before him as a result of the accident at the Ponte Vasco da Gama .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hyder Consulting: Footprints on a global landscape - 150 years of improving the built environment ( Memento of November 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 4.3 MB)
2. ↑ Knights and Dames at Leigh Rayment's Peerage