| Mario G. Salvadori | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 19, 1907 Rome, Italy |
| Died | June 25, 1997 (aged 90) Manhattan, New York, U.S. |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Education | University of Rome (doctorates in civil engineering, mathematics) |
| Spouse | Carol Salvadori |
| Children | Vieri Salvadori (son) Michael Kazan (stepson) |
| Work | |
| Engineering discipline | civil engineering structural engineering forensic engineering |
| Institution memberships | Columbia University Salvadori Center |
| Significant awards | Hoover Medal (1993) Founders Award (1997, National Academy of Engineering) |
Mario G. Salvadori (March 19, 1907 – June 25, 1997)[1] was a structural engineer and professor of both civil engineering and architecture at Columbia University.
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Salvadori was born in Rome, Italy in 1907. His father, an engineer who worked for the telephone company, became the chief engineer of the city of Genoa when the phone company merged with their French counterpart. Salvadori's father later became the head of the gas and electric company in Spain. As a consequence, Salvadori spent many years of his youth in Madrid and only returned to Italy in 1923. Two years later, when he was 18, he started what the first student jazz band in Italy; one of his youthful dreams was to become a concert conductor, although his parents did not encourage this.[1]
He earned doctoral degrees in both civil engineering and mathematics from the University of Rome in 1930 and 1933 respectively. The next two years he did graduate research in photoelasticity at University College London. Subsequently, he returned to Rome, where he served as an instructor at the University of Rome. Salvadori was an outspoken critic of the regime of Benito Mussolini,[1] and he subsequently left Italy in 1938 or 1939[1] for New York at the recommendation of his teacher and friend, Enrico Fermi.
In the United States, Salvadori first worked for the Lionel Train Company until 1940, developing time and motion studies that so impressed the president that he was made an offer to become CEO, which he turned down. During World War II he was – unbeknownst to himself at the time – a consultant on the Manhattan Project for three years.[1] After the war, he took up teaching at Columbia University, where he would become a professor in 1959 in the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation;[1][2] he taught at Columbia for 50 years. As he reached retirement age, he began volunteering to work with under-privileged minority students from inner-city New York public schools. Developing a hands-on method of teaching kids about the built environment, he was able to reach out to thousands of students and teachers, giving them an appreciation of the usefulness of mathematics and science. In 1987 he founded the Salvadori Educational Center on the Built Environment, since renamed the Salvadori Center,[3] a non-profit educational center on the campus of City College of New York which uses the "city as classroom" to help teachers and students master the core subject areas in their curricula.
From 1954 to 1960, Salvadori worked as a consultant and then principal at Weidlinger Associates,[4] an engineering firm in New York City. He then became a partner until 1991, when he became honorary chairman.[1] As a structural engineer, Salvadori became known for the design of thin concrete shells as he strove to create great architecture in all of his projects, including the concrete structural system for the CBS Building in Manhattan, designed by Eero Saarinen, and the seashell restaurant at the hotel La Concha, in San Juan, Puerto Rico.[1] He was also considered to be an authority on structural failure, and, as a forensic engineer helped to investigate numerous building failures due to natural disasters such as earthquakes and human error in construction or design.[1]
Salvadori died in Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, New York City on June 25, 1997 of natural causes, at the age of 90.[2] He was at the time the James Renwick Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering and Applied Science and Professor of Architecture Emeritus at Columbia.[2][1]
Salvadori was the author of both well-respected textbooks on architectural structures and applied mathematics and books for the lay reader. Among the fifteen titles he wrote[2] are Numerical Methods in Engineering (1953), Structural Design in Architecture (1967), Why Buildings Stand Up (1980),[6] Why Buildings Fall Down (1992),[7] and Why The Earth Quakes (1995). Salvadori is also known for his translation of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks into English, and of Emily Dickinson's poems into Italian.