William LeMessurier

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William James LeMessurier (1926 - ) is a prominent structural engineer. Born in Pontiac, Michigan, LeMessurier graduated with an AB from Harvard, went to Harvard Graduate School of Design and then earned a master's degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953. ^[1]. He is the founder and chairman of LeMessurier Consultants. ^[2]. He was awarded the AIA Allied Professions Medal in 1968, elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1978, elected an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects in 1988, and elected an honorary member of the American Society of Civil Engineers(ASCE) in 1989. ^[3]

While responsible for the structural engineering on a large number of prominent buildings, including Boston City Hall, LeMessurier is perhaps best known for an error. As the result of the questions of a student, LeMessurier re-assessed his calculations on the Citicorp headquarters tower in New York City in 1977, after the building had already been finished, and found that the building was more vulnerable than originally thought. This triggered a hurried, clandestine retrofit described in a celebrated article in The New Yorker, "The Fifty-Nine-Story Crisis," which is now used as an ethical case-study.