Tung-Yen Lin at an event to record his oral history.
Bruce Cook photo
Tung-Yen Lin (CE '33) builds bridges between the impossible and the possible. Often called the greatest structural engineer in the world, Lin pioneered the use of prestressed concrete, combining the tensile strength of steel with concrete's resistance to compression.
As leader of T.Y. Lin International, which he founded in 1953, the engineer built innovative bridges in Costa Rica, Libya, Taipei, Taiwan, and of course the United States. In San Francisco, Lin engineered the multiple 300-foot arches that support the ceiling of the massive Moscone Convention Center, making it the largest underground room in the world.
Lin is perhaps best known, though, for daring designs that have yet to be built. The Intercontinental Peace Bridge would span the Bering Strait to connect Siberia and Alaska. Even grander is Lin's proposal to bridge the Strait of Gibraltar with two 16,000 foot spans. Each of the bridge's cantilevered towers would be 3,000 feet tall, twice the size of the world's tallest skyscraper. The fiberglass road deck would be suspended by 1,000,000 miles of wire cables.
While the bridge would cost an estimated $15 billion, Lin's proposal is no joke. The United Nations and other international organizations supported the research and design studies while the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering honored Lin's work with an Outstanding Paper Award.
Born in China in 1912, Lin enrolled in UC Berkley in 1932. After graduation, he returned to Shanghai and landed a job with the Chinese Government Railways, quickly becoming chief bridge engineer of a new mountain railroad. In 1946, Lin, with wife Margaret, returned to Berkeley as faculty. Currently professor emeritus, Lin received the Alumnus of the Year award in 1994 from the California Alumni Association.
Lin is now chairman of Tung-Yen China, focused on projects in his homeland. These days, the gaps he hopes to span are as much political as they are physical.
"There's no question that this ideological gap exists and must be bridged," Lin has said. "We must bridge to democracy."
