Arthur Casagrande

Who was Arthur Casagrande?

Arthur Casagrande 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, Austria and 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 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.