Jean Résal (22 October 1854, in Besançon – 14 November 1919, in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

) was a French

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...

. He was a professor of

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, and ...

at the

École polytechnique École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

, and designed several metal bridges in France, especially bridges above the Seine in Paris: The career of the brilliant student of the École des ponts ParisTech was always an upward ladder: service in the Roads and Bridges Department at the Loire-Atlantique Département and thereafter in the shipping authority in Paris. Résal succeeded the student of

Saint-Venant Saint-Venant ( vls, Papingem) is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department (administrative division) in the Hauts-de-France region of France. Geography Saint-Venant is situated some northwest of Béthune and west of Lille, at the junction o ...

, ''Alfred-Aimé Flamant'' (1839-1915), at the Chair of Strength of Materials at the École des ponts ParisTech in 1892. Although Résal had already published a two-volume work on arch bridges together with ''Ernest Degrand'' (1822-1892), he concentrated on the theory and practice of steel bridges from a very early stage and had a profound influence on steel bridges at the transition from the discipline-formation to the consolidation period of theory of structures. * Nantes Résal Bridge (rail), destroyed during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, rebuilt in concrete * Road bridge over the

Erdre The Erdre (; br, Erzh) is a long river in western France, right tributary to the Loire. Its source is in the Maine-et-Loire '' department'', near La Pouëze. It flows through the ''departments'' Maine-et-Loire and Loire-Atlantique. The Erdre me ...

(

Nantes Nantes (, , ; Gallo: or ; ) is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 314,138 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabita ...

), appointed first bridge Barbin, then Pont du General de la Motte Rouge. * Mirabeau bridge in

(road bridge, 93 m range) * Alexandre-III Bridge (Paris) (highway bridge, 107 m range) * Bercy bridge (Paris) * Gateway Debilly (Paris) * Bridge of Notre-Dame (Paris) The bold steel arches of the Pont Général-de-la-Motte-Rouge (1885) in

Pont Mirabeau The pont Mirabeau in Paris was built between 1895 and 1897. It was listed a historical monument in 1975. Geography The bridge spans the Seine from the 15th arrondissement (left bank), to the 16th arrondissement. It links rue de la Convention ...

(1896) in Paris, Pont de l'Université (1899),

Pont Alexandre III The Pont Alexandre III is a deck arch bridge that spans the Seine in Paris. It connects the Champs-Élysées quarter with those of the Invalides and Eiffel Tower. The bridge is widely regarded as the most ornate, extravagant bridge in the city. ...

(1900) and Pont Notre-Dame (1914) in Paris set standards for steel bridges. All those bridges listed could only be built as a result of Résal’s research into elasticity and the strength of structural steels, work that he summarised in a monograph (1892). Furthermore, Résal made a lasting contribution to earth pressure theory (1903, 1910), which Albert Caquot would use successfully as his starting point.

Works

*''Ponts métalliques'', 2 Volumes 1885,
Online
*mit Ernest Degrand: ''Ponts en maçonnerie'', 2 Volumes, 1887,
Volume 1 OnlineVolume 2 Online
*''Constructions métalliques, élasticité et résistance des matériaux, fonte, fer et acier'', 1892
Online
*''Résistance des matériaux. Cours de l'École des ponts et chaussées'', 1892; 1922
Online
*mit Amédée Alby: ''Notes sur la construction du pont Alexandre III'', 1899 *''Stabilité des constructions. Cours de l'École des ponts et chaussées'', 1901,
Online
*''Poussée des terres, stabilité des murs de soutènement'', 1903,
Online
*''Cours de ponts métalliques professé à l'École nationale des ponts et chaussées. Ponts en arcs et ponts suspendus'', 3 Bände, 1912–1922
Online

Achievements

Image:pont_mirabeau_paris_close_up.jpg, Mirabeau bridge Image:Pont_de_Bercy.jpg, Bercy bridge Image:France_Paris_Pont_Notre_Dame_01.JPG, Bridge of Notre-Dame

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Resal, Louis-Jean French bridge engineers People from Besançon 1854 births 1919 deaths