Jean Kérisel

Jean Kérisel (November 18th, 1908 - January 22nd, 2005), general engineer of the Highways Departments, was an universally known expert in soil mechanics, science which it developed and taught with ENPC. It contributed a share essential with the progress of the Géotechnique. In addition to 70 years of community activity, it carried out a considerable work in the fields of art to build and archeology.

Biography

Jean Lehuérou Kérisel, from his complete name, originating in a family of Breton lawyers, was born on November 18th, 1908 in Saint-Brieuc (Brittany). He enters to the Polytechnic school (Promotion 1928), and leaves major the National school of the Highways Departments in 1933.

The destiny of Jean Kérisel was marked by its meeting with the eminent engineer and erudite Albert Caquot, of which he marries the girl, Suzy, in 1931. Civil engineer in Orleans of 1933 to 1940, it was interested in the development theoretical and practical of what was going to become the Soil mechanics , of which he will become an expert universally recognized. He obtains in 1935 the title of Doctor Physical be-Sciences in Sorbonne, his thesis relating to the study of the friction of the pulverulent mediums and his application to the study of the foundations.

Director of the Rebuilding of France, after the Second world war

During the Second world war, lieutenant of the Genious, decorated with the Military Cross with Quotation to the order of the brigade, it continues his career as Directeur of Construction to the Ministry for the Rebuilding of 1944 to 1951. By the importance of the real damage, France was classified just after the Soviet Union and Germany. It directs the rebuilding of the whole of the French cities, near the ministers Raoul Dautry and Claudius-Small Eugene, and then carries out building sites of experiments of prototypes of dwellings (Le Corbusier) and industrial methods. In 1951, estimating that the essence of the task of rebuilding is achieved, he resigns to pass in the private one.

The geotechnical expert

In 1952, it founds the Simecsol research department, specialized in geotechnics, which it directed until 1979. It took part, as an originator, expert or council, in particular with the following projects:

foundations of the bridges Houphouët Boigny to Abidjan and of Onitsha in Nigeria.
foundations of the bridge of Maracaibo to the Venezuela (1958-1962) - prestressed concrete Bridge 8,7 km length.
foundations of new the Bridge of Alma on the Seine in Paris (1970), the broadest bridge of the capital.
earth dam and ripraps of Arzal (1965-1970) - 500 m of width on a great thickness of vase in the estuary of Unpleasant (Brittany).
underground work of the subway express train the RER for the RATP in Paris (20 years of council), of the subway of Lyon, Marseilles and the Cairo (Egypt).
tunnels of Fourvière to Lyon and Bielsa under the Pyrenees.
harbor work with Sibari, Italy (1970-1987), and in Douala (Cameroun)
foundations of great industrial units and real estate: Usinor in Dunkirk, nuclear plants of Gravelines and Belleville on the Loire, towers of Defense, Montparnasse turn.
ministerial expertise in the accident of the railway tunnel of Vierzy, close to Soissons (June 1972), which made 108 dead, when two trains passing each other in opposite direction caused a collapse of the vault.

From 1951 to 1969, he is full professor of the pulpit of soil mechanics to the National school of the Highways Departments where it forms a generation of engineers. At the time of his interventions throughout the world or of research and experiments which it did not cease carrying out in geotechnics, Jean Kérisel publishes, of 1935 to 2000, a considerable number of articles which made authority, including his treaty of soil mechanics (written with Albert Caquot in 1949) and his tables of butted and push, many times republished and enriched in several languages.

He takes part in the technological developments des in the field of the foundations and underground work. He encourages the new methods (like the penetrometer and the pressure gauge of Louis Menard) and very early develops the full-scale tests on real works.

The Egyptologist and the writer

In 1979, it gives up the direction of Simecsol, without forsaking for as much and the activity soil mechanics of consulting engineer. Untiring worker, his community activity having led it to the Cairo for work of the subway, it starts a second “career” of Egyptologist and impassions himself then for the works of the Egypt of the Pharaons. With Albert Caquot, it had presented a project for the displacement of the temple of Abou Simbel, required by the rise of water behind the dam of Aswan. The thorough searchs for Jean Kérisel on the large pyramid of Khéops, whose tomb does not have until now found step, lead it in 2002 to emit a theory on the site of this tomb, coherent with the testimony of the large Greek historian Hérodote and recognized like extremely plausible. He proposes also a theory of the method of construction of the pyramid.

This passion and its talent of writer will lead it to deliver his analysis and its reflections of manufacturer in five works in the field of archeology and Egyptology, published between 1987 and 2005 in French and English, and many times republished and enriched.

More generally, thorough knowledge that it acquired of the history of geotechnics brings it to be interested in pathology of the works of old. For good to include/understand of them all the mechanisms and the lessons, it is interested in particular in the cathedral of Beauvais, the Pantheon and the Tour of Pisa (from which it chaired several scientific committees for its rectification).

The man

Large theorist having a broad practice of the ground, knowing to put at the range his interlocutors, it really gave to the soil mechanics his noble letters.

Its disciples and its pars both recognized it in France and abroad, electing it president of the French Committee of Soil mechanics and Travaux of Foundations, posts that it will occupy of 1969 to 1973, and that it will give up to occupy the presidency until 1979 of the International Company of Soil mechanics and Travaux of Foundations (ISSMFE), gathering 50 countries and 10000 members. Its merits were recognized by many distinctions granted by the French government (Commander of the Légion of honor), the Academy of Science of Hungary in 1973 (honorary member), British Geotechnical Society in 1975 (speaker of the famous Rankine conference), the University of Liege in 1975 and that of Naples in 1996 (honorary doctor).

Publications of Jean Kérisel

; Soil mechanics

'' Tables of thrust, thorough and bearing force of the foundations '' and Tables for the calculation off passive presses, active presses and bearing capacity off foundations , joint author with Albert Caquot, (1948), Gauthier-Villars, Paris, and Lewis, London. Republished in 1973, Co author with Albert Caquot and Elie Absi, Gauthier-Villars/Bordered, Paris, and in 1990 and 2003, Presses ENPC, Paris, Balkema, Rotterdam.
Treated of Soil mechanics , joint author with Albert Caquot, in May 1949, republished in 1956 and 1966, Gauthier-Villars, Paris; translated into German in 1967 Grundlagen der Bodenmechanik , Springer-Verlag, Berlin; translated into Spanish in 1969 Tratado de Mecánica de Suelos , Interciencia, Madrid (1969); also translated into Rumanian in 1968 and Japanese in 1975.
Course of Soil mechanics , editions 1950-1951, 1954-1955, 1957-1958, 1959-1960, 1961-1962 and 1963-1964”, Presses ENPC, Paris.
Landslides, Abacuses , Dunod, Paris (1967).

; Archeology

Down to Earth, Foundations Past and Present, the Invisible Art off the Builder , Balkema, Rotterdam (1987 and 1991).
'' the Pyramid through the ages. Myths and religions '', Presses of the ENPC, Paris (1991).
'' Génie and disproportion of a Pharaon: Khéops '', Stock, Paris (1996 and 2001).
'' the Nile: the hope and anger. Wisdom with disproportion '', Presses ENPC, Paris (1999). “The Nile and its Masters, Past, Present, Future, Source off Hope and Anger”, Balkema, Rotterdam (2001).
“The tomb off Cheops and the testimony off Herodotus”, 29 janv. 2002, re-examined Discussions in Egyptology 53, pp. 47 to 55, Oxford.
'' Pierres and Hommes, of the Pharaons at our days '', Presses of the ENPC, Paris (2004). “Off Stones and Man: from the present Pharaohs to the day”, Taylor & Francis (London)/Balkema, Leiden (Holland) (2005).

; Biography of Albert Caquot

Albert Caquot, Creator and Precursory , Eyrolles, Paris (1978).
'' Albert Caquot (1881-1976), Scientist, soldier and builder '', Presses of the ENPC, Paris (2001)

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