Arthur Casagrande
| Arthur Casagrande | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 28, 1902 Haidenschaft, Austria |
| Died | September 6, 1981 (aged 79) |
| Occupation | Civil engineer, Geotechnical engineer |
Arthur Casagrande (August 28, 1902 – September 6, 1981) was an Austrian-born American civil engineer who made important contributions to the fields of engineering geology and geotechnical engineering during its infancy. Renowned for his ingenious designs of soil testing apparatus and fundamental research on seepage and soil liquefaction, he is also credited for developing the soil mechanics teaching programme at Harvard University during the early 1930s that has since been modelled in many universities around the world.
Casagrande was born in Haidenschaft , in present Slovenia, at that time part of the Austrian Empire. He moved to Trieste after attending his first year in school in Linz. When reaching the age to enter secondary school he entered the Realschule, where students are typically expected to take on an apprenticeship and pursue a technical career upon graduating. The decision to attend the Realschule was chiefly influenced by his maternal forebears, many of whom coming from mechanical and chemical engineering backgrounds. He graduated from the Technische Hochschule (TH) in Vienna with a civil engineering degree in 1924, after which he carried on working there as a full-time assistant to Professor Schaffernak in the hydraulics laboratory.
Following the dissolution of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire after World War I, there was little construction work around, leaving employment scant prospects in the civil engineering field. When Casagrande’s father died in 1924, the duty of supporting the financial burden of the entire family, together with a strong desire to engage in major civil engineering projects, prompted him to take the gamble of moving to the United States, a decision that was not supported by his mother and professor. Casagrande stayed in a YMCA hostel for ten days after arriving in New York in 1926, and decided to go to New Jersey and work as a draftsman for a few months. While visiting the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a job interview, he met Karl Terzaghi who had only just arrived, and was immediately offered the job opportunity to work as his private assistant.
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