Albert Caquot

Albert Caquot
Albert Caquot, wearing a dark suit in the foreground, in École Polytechnique premises, Paris, ca 1900.
Born	1 July 1881 Vouziers, Ardennes, France
Died	28 November 1976(1976-11-28) (aged 95) Paris, France
Nationality	France
Education	École Polytechnique, 1899 Ponts et Chaussées
Occupation	engineer and inventor

Albert Irénée Caquot (1 July 1881 – 28 November 1976) was considered as the "best living French engineer" during half a century. He received the “Croix de guerre 1914–1918 (France)” (military honor) and was Grand-croix of the Légion d’Honneur (1951). He was a member of the French Academy of Sciences from 1934 till his death. In 1962, he was awarded the Wilhelm Exner Medal.

His parents, Paul Auguste Ondrine Caquot and wife Marie Irma (born Cousinard) owned a family farm in Vouziers, in the Ardennes, near the Belgian border. His father taught him modernism, by installing at their place electricity and telephone as early as 1890. One year only after high school, at eighteen years old, he was admitted at the Ecole Polytechnique ("year" 1899). Six years later, he graduated in the “Corps des Ponts et Chaussées”.

From 1905 to 1912, he was a project manager in Troyes (Aube), and was pointed out for major civil work improvements he undertook with the city sewer system. This protected the city from the centennial flood of the . In 1912, he joined a leading structural engineering firm where he applied his unique talent of structure designer.

Albert Caquot conducted outstanding research that was immediately applied in construction. His major contributions include:

In the course of his life, Albert Caquot taught mechanical science for a long time in three of the most prominent French engineering schools in Paris: Écoles nationales supérieures des Mines, des Ponts et de l’Aéronautique.

In the course of his career, as both a highly creative designer and a tireless calculator, he designed more than 300 bridges and facilities among which several were world records at the time: