William Hubert Burr

William Hubert Burr (born July 14, 1851 in Watertown (Connecticut) , † December 13, 1934 in New York City ) was an American civil engineer.

Burr studied civil engineering at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) with a diploma in 1872. He then worked for the bridge construction company Philipsburg Manufacturing Company and, after its bankruptcy in 1874, at the municipal waterworks in Newark (New York) . From 1875 he taught mechanics at the RPI and became a professor there in 1876. From 1884 he was back in the construction industry. He was Adolphus Bonzano's assistant at the Phoenix Bridge Company , where he worked on several major bridges in the United States, and in 1891 he became managing director of the Sooysmith company in New York, which specializes in startups. 1892/93 he was a professor at Harvard University and from 1893 to 1916 at Columbia University .

In 1899 he was on the US President's committee for the Panama Canal project and advised New York authorities, for example, on the Catskill Equaduct. He also gave lectures published in 1902 at the Cooper Union in the same year, including on the history of construction. His structures include the Arlington Bridge over the Potomac in Washington with a span of 58 m. He wrote several textbooks on structural engineering, bridge construction and strength theory.

In 1914, Burr was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

literature

• Karl-Eugen Kurrer : History of Structural Analysis. In Search of Balance , Ernst & Sohn , 2016, p. 957 (biography), ISBN 978-3-433-03134-6

Fonts

• The elasticity and resistance of materials of engineering, New York: Wiley 1883
• A course on the stresses in bridges and roof trusses, arched ribbs and suspension bridges, 4th edition, Wiley 1888
• Ancient and modern engineering and the Isthmian Canal, Wiley 1902
• with MS Falk: The design and construction of metallic bridges, New York: Wiley 1905
• with MS Falk: The graphic method by influence lines for bridge and roof computations, Wiley 1905