Tung-Yen Lin

Tung-Yen Lin ( Chinese  林 同 棪 , Pinyin Lín Tóngyán ; born November 14, 1912 in Fuzhou , Republic of China ; † November 15, 2003 in El Cerrito , California) was a Sino-American civil engineer who was especially responsible for his bridges and Prestressed concrete structures was known. In the USA he did pioneering work in the field of prestressed concrete. In 1986 he was awarded the National Medal of Science .

Guandu Bridge in Taiwan

Lin was the son of a judge at the Supreme People's Court of the People's Republic of China in Beijing . He completed his studies in civil engineering at Jiaotong University in 1931 and completed this with a degree at the University of California at Berkeley , which he completed in 1933 with a master's degree. Afterwards, Tung-Yen constructed numerous bridges in China, including railway bridges.

In 1946 Tung-Yen was back in Berkeley doing research in the field of prestressed concrete, which was still relatively unknown in the USA at the time. He simplified and standardized the design methods and helped make this variant of reinforced concrete popular in the United States. Until his retirement in 1976 he was a professor at Berkeley, where he headed the structural engineering department.

In 1954, Tung-Yen founded the engineering company TY Lin International , which he sold in 1987, although he worked until 1992. In 1992, he established a new engineering company for projects in China called Lin Tung-Yen China .

His projects include the Moscone Center in San Francisco , completed in 1962 , which had the largest underground hall when it opened, the Guandu Bridge in Taiwan and the grandstand roof of the La Rinconada Hippodrome , a racecourse in Caracas . The visionary bridge project over the Bering Strait , known by Tung-Yen as the International Peace Bridge , and his project for a bridge over the Strait of Gibraltar were not implemented.

Tung-Yen was an honorary member of ASCE , which named an award for prestressed concrete after him. In 1974 he received the Freyssinet Medal and in 1990 the John A. Roebling Medal of the International Bridge Conference. In 1957 he helped organize the first World Congress for Prestressed Concrete in San Francisco .

Tung-Yen married Margaret Kao in 1941, also the daughter of a high judge in Beijing. His cousin Tung-Hua Lin was also a well-known civil engineer.

literature

• Boris Bresler, TY Lin, John B. Scalzi: Design of Steel Structures . 2nd Edition. Wiley, New York 1968, ISBN 978-0-471-10297-7 .
• TY Lin, Ned Hamilton Burns: Design of prestressed concrete structure . 3. Edition. Wiley, New York 1981, ISBN 978-0-471-01898-8 .
• TY Lin, Sidney D. Stotesbury: Structural concepts and systems for architects and engineers . 2nd Edition. Van Nostrand, New York 1981, ISBN 0-471-05186-1 .
• TY Lin: Prestressed Concrete , Scientific American, July 1958.

Web links

• TY Lin, world renowned structural engineer, dies at age 91. In: UC Berkeley News. University of California , November 18, 2003, accessed April 5, 2014 (obituary). 
• TY Lin: "The Father of Prestressed Concrete": Teaching Engineers, Bridging Rivers and Borders, 1931 to 1999. University of California , 2001, accessed April 5, 2014 .