Tung-Yen Lin

Born in Shanghai, Lin trained as an engineer. His passion was bridges, and to make them better he used prestressed concrete, which uses embedded high-tension steel cables to allow more economical and better-looking building techniques. During his career, he oversaw the constructions of thousands of bridges, including a thousand in China alone. His ideas spread when he turned to teaching: he was a professor at the University of California in Berkeley from 1946 to 1976 -- his alma mater (he got a graduate degree there in 1933). He also designed an elevated roadway into San Francisco International Airport. When President Ronald Reagan presented Lin the National Medal of Science in 1986, he shocked the President by presenting him with a design for an "Intercontinental Peace Bridge" across the Bering Strait, linking the U.S. with the USSR. "You spend money on bombs, and in 10 years they're out of date," he said later. "But you build bridges, they last forever." He died November 15 at home in El Cerrito, Calif. He was 91. From This is True for 16 November 2003 Suggestions for further reading: Bridges: Amazing Structures to Design, Build & Test (Kaleidoscope Kids) by Carol A. Johmann, Elizabeth Rieth Amazon Price: $9.32 Customer Review: This book is great- Good explanations on the building and design of bridges. I am using it in a homeschool co-op for activities for our group of kids. I saw it when I want to purchase The Art of Construction: Projects and Principles for Beginning Eng...   Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology by William A. Dembski Amazon Price: $14.96 Customer Review: According to Darwin and the theory of evolution, biological systems may look designed, but that design is illusory because there's a purely undirected process, namely natural selection acting on random mutations that can produce that appearance ...   Bridges: Three Thousand Years of Defying Nature by David J. Brown Amazon Price: $29.95 Customer Review: I've had this book for several months now, sitting on my coffee table, and have read it over and over. My only complaint is I wish it were 10 times longer! It is engagingly written, beautifully photographed. The writer strikes what for me was the rig...   Fences, Gates, and Bridges And How to Build Them by George A. Martin Amazon Price: $11.21 Customer Review: We always need some type of enclosure on our organic dairy farm but didn't always have the skills needed to build or fix the necessary items. This book has been invaluable, at least for ideas. Our carpentry skills are improving. Would be very help...   The Japanese Tea Garden by Marc Peter Keane Amazon Price: $41.97 Customer Review: Keane has done a great service to both those who are interested in gardens and those who are interested in the Way of Tea. This is a beautifully designed and illustrated book that will fulfill every requirement for proud display on your coffee table....   Newsfeed display by CaRP

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