Nikolai Beleliubskii

Born Mar. 1 (13), 1845; died Aug. 4,1922. Russian engineer and expert in construction mechanics and bridge building.

Beleliubskii graduated in 1867 from the St. Petersburg Institute of Communications Engineers and was named a professor there in 1873. For several decades he had charge of the development of bridge building in Russia. A number of major steel railroad bridges were built from Beleliubskii’s blueprints on the Volga, Dnieper, Ob’, Belaia, Ingulets, and other rivers. Beleliubskii worked out a technique for rapidly substituting steel bridges for wooden structures without de-touring traffic; he also introduced substantial improvements in the structure of steel suspension bridges and directed the first experimental laboratory for construction materials in Russia. A number of techniques for testing materials that he proposed have been adopted internationally. His work in the study of the mechanical properties of reinforced concrete (1886–91) deserves special recognition. Under his direction technical specifications and standards for reinforced concrete work were developed from 1905 to 1908. Beleliubskii’s Course in Construction Mechanics, which he published in 1885, was the first complete course in this discipline in the Russian language.