Every Day Is Special: April 3 - Happy Birthday, Fazlur Rahman Khan

April 3 - Happy Birthday, Fazlur Rahman Khan

Posted on April 3, 2019

Fazlur Rahman Khan was born in what is now Bangladesh, on this date in 1929. That region underwent quite a bit of political turbulence as it converted from British-ruled India to East Pakistan to Bangladesh, and it continues to face problems of poverty, low literacy rates, and lack of educational opportunities.

But when you read a fact like a particular nation faces "problems of poverty, low literacy rates, and lack of educational opportunities," you have to remember that not everyone in a nation suffers from those problems.

Khan's father was a math teacher and a textbook author, and Khan was able to get a good education. He studied civil engineering in two different Bangladeshi colleges and then was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship that enabled him to come study in the United States.

Get this: in three years, Khan was able to earn TWO master's degrees AND a PhD (in theoretical and applied mechanics and structural engineering)!!

Fazlur Rahman Khan became a U.S. citizen, a pioneer in computer-aided design (CAD), the "Father of Tubular Designs" for skyscrapers, the "Einstein of Structural Engineering," and the "Greatest Structural Engineer of the 20th Century."

Khan designed the Sears Tower (now the Willis Tower, below), the tallest building in the world from 1973 to 1998, and the 100-story John Hancock Center (right).

Kahn's innovations in skyscraper design are still used today.

The reason that tubular designs are so important for skyscrapers is that horizontal forces such as wind and earthquakes are much more substantial the higher a building rises. By creating buildings that have central tubes (for elevator shafts and other services) "wrapped" by cantilevered floors and (in tube-within-a-tube designs) an exterior "tube," the building has enough strength to withstand those horizontal forces while using fewer vertical beams and therefore having more usable floor space.

It's a complicated topic, of course, but here are a few diagrams to help you appreciate tubular design and cantilevers (which are horizontal beams fixed on only one end):

The multi-level building is an example of bundled-tube design.

By the way, although most of Khan's fame revolves around high-rise buildings, he also designed things like stadiums and an airport terminal, and he even helped design the building for a solar telescope.