Almost all man-made shelter are hard works of these people. They make our homes worth living and offices worth working. Their magical skills of creating mere pieces of bricks into paradises gets appreciation from all over the globe. Our lifestyle is becoming a sheer product of development these days. Evolution in our architecture is a hallmark of the progress we made. From mentions to small apartments these marvels have given us best in our budgets. They make the roof above our head our happy place. They just do not create shelter they ensure our comfort and safety. Often the architecture takes all the credit and we tend to forget the hard work of the people who brought those blueprints into real. The article mentions ten best civil engineers of the world.

1.Henry Larcom Abbot

A military engineer and career officer in US army, Henry Larcom Abbot (August 13, 1831-October 1, 1927) had massive contributions in the field of engineering. After his retirement from the army, he was appointed as a civil engineer and as a consultant for the locks on the Panama Canal. When the Americans assumed control of the project Abbot served from 1905 to 1906 on the Board of Consulting Engineers, a body appointed by Theodore Roosevelt and charged with the preparation of a plan for canal construction. Abbot’s last service to the canal was as a member of the Panama Canal Slide Committee in 1915.

2.Duff A. Abrams

Duff A. Abrams (1880-1965) was an American researcher in the field of composition and properties of concrete. He developed the basic methods for testing concrete characteristics still in use today. Some of the results of his research was: the definition of the concept of fineness modulus; the definition of the water-cement ratio a test method for the workability of a concrete mix by using what is called ‘Abram’s cone’, see concrete slump test. In a comprehensive research program, Abrams established the relationship between the water-cement ratio and the compressive strength of concrete. The results were first published in 1918 in D. A. Abrams, Design of Concrete Mixtures, Bulletin 1, Structural Materials Research Laboratory, Lewis Institute, Chicago, 1918.

3.Charles Adler Jr

Charles Adler Jr. (June 20, 1899-October 23, 1980) was an American inventor and engineer. He is most known for developing devices meant to improve transportation safety, including sonically actuated traffic lights, colorblind road signals, pedestrian push-buttons, and flashing aircraft lights. He conceived the idea for this automobile safety feature on October 1, 1924 and had a working prototype by December 1925. In the 1920s Adler worked on developing the sonically actuated traffic light. To operate it, drivers pulled up to a red light and honked their horns to make the light change. The system, designed for use on intersections between lightly traveled and major roads. After getting his pilot’s license and nearly colliding with another plane, he decided to pursue improvements in aviation safety.

4.Truma Heminway Aldrich

Truma Heminway Aldrich (October 17, 1848-April 28, 1932) was a civil engineer, a mining company executive, and a paleontologist, and briefly served in the United States House of Representatives and as Postmaster of Birmingham. He investigated the existing coal-mining operations at Montevallo and around the Cahaba Coal Field. The next year he secured a lease on the Montevallo coal mines and set to work extracting coal that summer. In 1881 Aldrich founded the Cahaba Coal Company in Bibb County. After building a railroad connector, the company laid out a “model community” on the bank of Caffee Creek.

5.Barnard Amadei

Barnard Amadei (July 23, 1954) is a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, founder of Engineers Without Borders (USA), and former director of the Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a recipient of the Hoover Medal. In 2009, he was recognized with an Award of Excellence from Engineering News-Record. In 2012, Dr. Amadei was appointed as a Science Envoy by the U.S. Department of State.

6.Sir David Anderson

Sir David Anderson (1880-1953) was a Scottish civil engineer and lawyer. Anderson was born in 1880 at Leven, Fife, Scotland. In 1921, on his return from Army service, Anderson joined a partnership with fellow engineers Basil Mott and David Hay, forming the company Mott Hay and Anderson. Mott, Hay and Anderson traded until 1989, when it merged with Sir M MacDonald & Partners to form Mott MacDonald. Anderson was elected president of the Institution of Civil Engineers for the November 1943 to November 1944 session.

7.Othmar Hermann Ammann

Othmar Hermann Ammann (March 26, 1879-September 22, 1965) was a Swiss American structural engineer. The George Washington Bridge, Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and Bayonne Bridge are some of his popular works. Ammann designed more than half of the eleven bridges that connect New York City to the rest of the United States. His talent and ingenuity helped him create the two longest suspension bridges of his time. Ammann was known for being able to create bridges that were light, inexpensive, yet simple and beautiful. He was able to do this by using the deflection theory. He believed that the weight per foot of the span and the cables would provide enough stiffness so that the bridge would not need any stiffening trusses. This made him popular during the depression era when being able to reduce the cost was crucial.

8.Apollodorous of Damascus

Trajan’s keen Greek engineer, architect, designer and sculptor designed Trajan’s Forum, a temple of Trajan. He is widely credited as the architect of the third iteration of the Pantheon, and cited as the builder of the Alconétar Bridge in Spain. In 106 he also completed or restored the Odeon of Domitian begun in the Campus Martius under Domitian. Trajan’s Column, in the centre of the Forum, is celebrated as being the first triumphal monument of its kind. On the accession of Hadrian, whom he had offended by ridiculing his performances as architect and artist, Apollodorus was banished and, shortly afterwards, being charged with imaginary crimes, put to death. He also wrote a treatise on Siege Engines, addressed to an unnamed emperor, likely Trajan. The monumental Danube Bridge of Apollodorus. Apollodorus himself stands in the foreground behind the sacrificing emperor. The story about Apollodoru’s death demonstrates the persistent hostility felt towards Hadrian in senatorial circles long after his reign, for if Cassius Dio included it in his history, he must have believed it. Many since have taken Dio’s anecdote at face value, while others have doubts.

9.William George Armstrong

William George Armstrong (26 November 1810-27 November 1900) was an English industrialist who founded the Armstrong Whitworth manufacturing concern on Tyneside. He was also an eminent scientist, inventor and philanthropist. In collaboration with the architect Richard Norman Shaw, he built Cragside in Northumberland, the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectricity. He is regarded as the inventor of modern artillery. Armstrong was responsible for developing the hydraulic accumulator. design a lighter, more mobile field gun, with greater range and accuracy. He built a breech-loading gun with a strong, rifled barrel made from wrought iron wrapped around a steel inner lining, designed to fire a shell rather than a ball. In 1855 he had a five-pounder ready for inspection by a government committee. The gun proved successful in trials, but the committee thought a higher calibre gun was needed, so Armstrong built an 18-pounder on the same design.

10.Dr John Jacob “Job” Crew Bradfield

Dr. John Jacob “Job” Crew Bradfield (26 December 1867 – 23 September 1943) was a prominent Australian engineer who is best known for his work overseeing the design and building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The Harbour Bridge formed only one component of the City Circle, Bradfield’s grand scheme for the railways of central Sydney, a modified version of which was completed after his death. He was also the designer of an unbuilt irrigation project known as the Bradfield Scheme, which proposed that remote areas of western Queensland and north-eastern South Australia could be made fertile by the diversion of rivers from North Queensland.