LEVI E

ITALY (see also List of Individuals)

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9.10.1914 Torino/I - 2.3.1993 Mexico City/ME

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Enzo Levi graduated as a physicist from the Turin Università degli Studi and there gained the PhD title in 1935. Due to political difficulties in Italy, Levi emigrated in 1939 for a decade to Bolivia as a hydraulic engineer and was involved in a number of dam schemes. In 1949, Levi moved to Mexico to head the hydraulic laboratory of Tecamachalco, Puebla. He there took interest in irrigation and dam engineering, and hydromechanics. From 1957 to 1986 Levi added to experimental hydraulics at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México UNAM. This facility has the largest hydraulic laboratory of Mexico and therefore was particularly suited for a scientist such as was Levi.

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Levi has contributed to a number of hydraulic problems. These include intake structures for dam schemes, siphons, energy dissipation and air entrainment of high-speed flows, high-speed flows in curves, constant head elements in a channel, hydraulic jump, streak formation in plane shallow flows, vortex formation, fluid turbulence and pier scour. Levi was considered an outstanding hydraulician who had contributed to a large number of topics both experimentally and theoretically. He was in addition involved in the organization of the hydraulics conferences held biannually by the IAHR Latin American Section. Further, Levi was a visiting Lecturer at the Universities of Manchester from 1973 to 1974, the Padua University in 1978, the Max-Planck-Institut in Göttingen in 1982 and the University of Florence in 1986. His 1995 book is one of the few in the history of hydraulics, and worthwhile to read. His passion for the Italian master Leonardo da Vinci becomes therein evident. Levi was a Corresponding Member of Académie des Sciences, Paris, an Honorary Member of Asociación Mexicana de Hidráulica from 1986, and awarded the ASCE Hunter Rouse Award in 1990.

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_{Anonymous (1990). Enzo Levi. Civil Engineering 60(12): 76. P}

_{Levi, E. (1964). Investigación acerca de las estrias longitudinales de las láminas vertientes. Ingenieria 34(4): 237-244.}

_{Levi, E. (1978). Eddy production inside wall layers. Journal of Hydraulic Research 16(2): 107-122.}

_{Levi, E. (1995). The science of water: The foundations of modern hydraulics. ASCE: New York. Levi-Levi, C. (1995). Enzo Levi: Vida y obra. Instituto Mexicano de Tecnologia del Agua: Morelos. http://www.imta.mx/serviprod/enzolevi.html}