from ISSMGE Bulletin: Volume 4, Issue 1 (pp.42-44)
OBITUARY
Dr. Leonardo Zeevaert Wiechers (1914-2010)
His life and achievements
Prof. Zeevaert at his office, ca. 2000
The international geotechnical engineering community is deeply saddened that Dr. Leonard Zeevaert passed away in Mexico City on February 16th, 2010. He was born in Veracruz, Mexico, on November 27th, 1914.
He obtained a Civil Engineer degree from the National University of Mexico in 1939, a Master degree in Civil Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1940 and was bestowed the title of Doctor in Philosophy (Ph. D.) at University of Illinois in 1949, where he worked with Dr. Karl Terzaghi in different soil mechanics assignments.
Professional practice. As a consulting engineer, he carried out Soil Mechanics surveys and performed analysis and design of structures and foundations for as many as 692 projects, during more than 50 years. He developed several foundation systems for highly compressible soils such as those encountered in Mexico City. He brought forward the basic theory of compensated foundations combined with friction piles and proposed a new method to estimate negative skin friction on point bearing piles.
One of the most important projects in which he had a leading participation was the Latinoamericana Tower, a 43-stories high building for which he performed Soil Mechanics studies, designing the foundation and acting as consulting engineer in the design of the steel structure, where the concept of controlled flexibility was applied for the first time (1947-1948). He developed a new procedure for the construction of buildings, eliminating columns in the facade to provide more architectural flexibility in the ground floor of such constructions. These ideas were introduced for the first time at international level in the design of the headquarters of “Compañía de Seguros Monterrey” (1960) and “Celanese Mexicana, S.A.”, both built in Mexico City.
He was also active in the field of Coastal Engineering studying wave action on the coastline and hydraulics of marginal lagoons. He designed harbors and marinas for small boats for various sites in the Mexican Republic.
He performed the analysis and design of foundations for turbogenerators at several industrial plants and provided advice for the foundation design of an atomic energy plant in San Jose, California, U.S.A.
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