Franco Levi

Franco Levi (September 20, 1914 in Turin – January 10, 2009) was an Italian engineer.

Professor Franco Levi, Honorary President of CEB and FIP. He received his degree in Engineering from the Ecole Centrale in Paris and from the Polytechnic University of Turin in the years 1936 and 1937. Already assistant to Professor Gustavo Colonnetti in Turin, in 1938 he had to go into exile to France and later on to Switzerland due to the anti-Semitic laws.

Back in Italy in 1945, he could resume at the Polytechnic University of Turin his outstanding research work, which was covering the most recent topics of structural mechanics and engineering, and published well known papers and books on the theory of states of coaction, on plastic theory, on the time-dependent behaviour of concrete structures, with particular regard to creep effects. He designed the Torino Palavela.

However, his attention was attracted since the beginning by the need of a quick transfer of scientific achievements to the practical design and construction of structures, and his efforts in such a direction are certainly among the most important services rendered to the community of structural engineers in which he was successful and for which he will be remembered.

The great opportunity for that action was the development of the new technique of pre-stressed concrete, in which he was scientifically involved since 1938, during his first research period. After the war, since 1945 to 1961, as Director of the CNR Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italian National Research Council) in Turin, Franco Levi had an essential role in the international discussion on the theoretical and practical aspects of this innovative technique and on the establishment of design rules to be internationally agreed.

The innovation of prestressed concrete, together with the new approaches of plastic design and of probabilistic safety criteria induced the most advanced specialists of structural design and analysis to install in 1953 a new committee (Comité Européen du Béton – CEB) having the objective of a coordination and synthesis of research and of the creation and international harmonization of the principles and rules for the conception, calculation, construction, and maintenance of concrete structures according to the new approaches. Franco Levi was appointed President of CEB from 1957 and maintained this position until 1968, leading this organization, with his dynamic action, to the publication of the first and the second set of CEB Recommendations.

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