BAŽANT Z

CZECH REPUBLIC AND SLOVAKIA (see also List of Individuals)

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11.6.1908 Nové Mesto/CR - 26.8.2001 Svrabov/CR

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Zdenek Bažant earned the degree of civil engineer in 1930 and the Doctor of engineering in 1934 from the Czech Technical University CVUT in Prague. He joined then the largest construction firm in Czechoslovakia where he was the chief designer from 1942. Except during the closure of the Czech universities during the Nazi occupation, Bažant simultaneously lectured at CVUT. He was there appointed professor of geotechnical engineering in 1947, but was from 1948 exposed to the communist harassment and political attacks. He and others gained moral superiority and respect to continue research and education. Ba ant retired in 1975 but continued as a staff consultant in Prague. He lived long enough to experience the joy of the fall of communism in 1989, although it had come too late for his career.

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Bažant was a Czech expert in foundation engineering and pursued in his ten books and more than 150 research papers a systematic scientific treatment of this engineering field based on soil mechanics. His textbooks Foundation engineering, and Methods of foundation engineering, received international attention. The 1953 book relates to the stability of cohesionless soils, a subject matter still under significant research activity today. He developed and experimentally verified a mathematical method to assess the stability of sand foundations in rising filtration flow. He also conducted systematic experiments on vibration, seismic stability and the liquefaction of saturated sand, from where he deduced design recommendations which were reported in international congresses. He was elected the General Reporter of the 6th European Conference on Soil Mechanics in Vienna in 1964. Although Ba ant belonged to the unfortunate generation whose entire productive life was spent under national socialist and communist dictatorships, he never complained, because he always saw at least some positive points.

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_{Anonymous (1937). Members of the 1 IAHR Congress. 1 IAHR Congress Berlin: 15. P Anonymous (1995). Bažant, Zdenek. Kdo je Kdo v Ceske Republice: 34-35. Manon: Praha. Bažant, Z. (1948). Critical head for piping beneath weirs. 3 ICOLD Congress Stockholm Q10(R10): 1-8.}

_{Bažant, Z. (1953). Equilibre limite des terres pulvérulentes dans l'écoulement curviligne ascendant. Nakladatelstvi Ceskoslovenske Akademie Ved: Prague.}

_{Bažant, Z. (1979). Methods of foundation engineering. Elsevier: Amsterdam.}

_{Bažant, Z. (1981). Foundation engineering. SNTL–ALFA: Prague, 3rd ed. (in Czech). Bažant, Z.P., Lamboj, L. (2001). Zdenek J. Bažant in memoriam. Personal communication. P}