Robert Maillart

Robert Maillart (1872–1940) was the Swiss engineer who saw reinforced concrete clearly. Forced to build cheaply, he stripped his bridges to the load path itself: the hollow-box arch at Salginatobel, the deck-stiffened curve at Schwandbach, the thin vault of the Cement Hall. His patents in the flat slab and the deck-stiffened arch still shape how engineers think about concrete.