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MenuHomeUpfront Now Up Books Towns Structures People Firms Lexicon | OLIVIER, HenryBorn: 1914 01 25Died: 1994 Engineer | |||
Dr Henry Olivier was born in Sutherland, Cape Province, on 25 January 1914, and received his early school education at the High School there. In 1929 he enrolled at Umtali High School where he matriculated in 1932, and won a Beit Junior Engineering Scholarship to the University of Cape Town. He graduated B.Sc. in Engineering with honours in 1936 and was awarded the Beit Senior Engineering Scholarship and also the Cape Town City Council Scholarship for overseas study. After completing a year's postgraduate training with a well-known firm of consulting engineers in Johannesburg, FE KANTHACK and PARTNERS, he proceeded to England where he joined the London firm of Consulting Engineers, Sir Alexander Gibb and Partners, an association which lasted for 31 years. Early in his career the author was one of the team which built the prototype of Mulberry Harbour. This was followed by the construction of submersible concrete naval bombardment towers used in the Allied landings in France in World War II. After the war Dr Olivier spent some time on the Scottish Hydro-Electric scheme before being sent to Iran by Sir Alexander Gibb and Partners as consultant engineer to compete internationally for a contract to supply reticulated water to Tehran. After this assignment he headed the team for the designing of the Lar Valley multi-purpose project that today provides power and irrigation for the development of this arid country.
In 1945 he was awarded the Beit Engineering Fellowship for postgraduate research. He graduated M.Sc. in Engineering at the University of Cape Town in 1948 and Ph.D. in Engineering at the University of London in 1953. In 1967 he received the first Doctorate of Engineering awarded by the University of the Witwatersrand and the following year received the Doctorate of Science (honoris causa) from the University of Cape Town. In 1954 he was decorated by H.M. the Queen for his services to Uganda with special reference to his work on the Owen Falls dam. He was invested a Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George. During the same year he was also awarded the Coronation Medal. He is a Fellow of the professional civil engineering institutions of Great Britain, the U.S.A., South Africa and Rhodesia and also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (Great Britain). He has published numerous technical articles in international journals and has published two textbooks "Irrigation and Climate" (Arnolds 1961) and "Irrigation and Water Resources Engineering" (Arnolds 1972). He was a member of Council of the South African Institution of Civil Engineers and is an Executive Member of the South African National Committee on Large Dams, and South African representative on the sub-Committee of the International Congress on Large Dams dealing with the Hydraulics of Dams. The Louw House Museum in Sutherland holds memorabilia of Dr Henry Olivier. (Back dust cover of the book Damit) For his obituary see Tribute to Dr Henry Olivier in Civil Engineering, Dec 1994, p6. Books by OLIVIER
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