Fulgence Bienvenüe

Fulgence Bienvenüe

Fulgence Bienvenüe (French pronunciation: [fylʒɑ̃s bjɛ̃v(ə)ny]; 27 January 1852 – 3 August 1936) was a French civil engineer, best known for his role in the construction of the Paris Métro, and has been called "Le Père du Métro" (Father of the Metro).: 162  A native of Uzel in Brittany, and the son of a notary, in 1872 Bienvenüe graduated from the École Polytechnique as a civil engineer: 150  and the same year he began working for the Department of Bridges and Roads at Alençon.: 150  His first assignment was the construction of new railway lines in the Mayenne area, in the course of which his left arm had to be amputated after being crushed in a construction accident. In 1886, Bienvenüe moved on to Paris to design and supervise the construction of aqueducts for the city, drawing water from the rivers Aube and Loire.: 151  Next, he built a cable railway near the Place de la République and created the park of Buttes-Chaumont.: 151  In 1891, he was appointed as Engineer-in-Chief for Bridges and Roads, the most prestigious engineering job in France.: 151  Paris city officials selected Bienvenüe to become chief engineer for the Paris Métro in 1896. He designed a special way of building new tunnels which allowed the swift repaving of the roads above; this involved (among other things) building the crown of the tunnel first and the floor last, the reverse of the usual method at that time.: 151, 162  Bienvenüe has the credit for the mostly swift and relatively uneventful construction of the Métro through the difficult and heterogenous Parisian soils and rocks.: 150–1, 162  He came up with the idea of freezing wet and unstable soil in order to permit the drilling of tunnels. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Fulgence Bienvenüe has received more than 42,713 page views. His biography is available in 18 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 16 in 2019). Fulgence Bienvenüe is the 261st most popular engineer (down from 258th in 2019), the 3,994th most popular biography from France (down from 3,702nd in 2019) and the 50th most popular French Engineer.