How to Pronounce Ralph Freeman (1911–1998)
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Feb 03, 1911 Finchley, England, United Kingdom Died on 24 Aug 1998 (aged 87)
British civil engineer (1911–1998)
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Ralph Freeman 19111998, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Family, Facts, Age, Net Worth, Biography and More in FamedBorn.com
About Ralph Freeman 19111998
- Sir Ralph Freeman (3 February 1911 – 24 August 1998) was an English civil engineer, responsible for the design of the Humber Suspension Bridge - the longest in the world until 1998.
- He was the son of Sir Ralph Freeman, designer of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.[1]He was educated at Uppingham School, Rutland and Worcester College, Oxford.
- Sir Ralph worked on bridges in South Africa and Rhodesia, where he met his wife Joan Rose, before returning to England in 1939 and joining Freeman Fox & Partners, a firm of consulting engineers (called Douglas Fox & Partners before changing its name in 1938 in honour of Sir Ralph's father, a senior partner there). Freeman served in the Royal Engineers during the Second World War as a Captain in the Experimental Bridging Establishment in Christchurch, Hampshire, England.
- He was involved in the development of a propped military suspension bridge.
- Freeman served in the volunteer Engineer and Railway Staff Corps, providing engineering expertise to the army, and was gazetted at the rank of Major in that corps on 6 October 1953.He then returned to Freeman Fox & Partners, eventually retiring in 1979, having worked on a variety of large projects: the M2 and M5 motorways, the Forth Road Bridge, the Severn Bridge, both Bosporus bridges, and the harbour tunnel and mass transit rail systems in Hong Kong.
- He served as president of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1966-7.The pinnacle of his career was the Humber suspension bridge which, when it opened in 1981, was the longest single-span suspension bridge in the world, 1410m between its two 155m-high pylons. His son, Ralph (but known as Anthony), who also took up civil engineering, died in July 1998 after an accident on the Vasco da Gama bridge in Lisbon.
