Bridge engineer Jean Muller, 80, named by ENR in 1999 as one of the industry’s top 125 leaders, died March 17 at his home in France.

MULLER

Muller’s 55-year career included prominent projects worldwide. A protégé of Eugene Freyssinet, the inventor of modern prestressed concrete, he is credited with the match-cast precast segmental construction method for concrete bridges, first implemented in 1962 for the Choisy Le Roy Bridge in France. He also designed Normandy’s Brotonne Bridge, the first concrete box-girder with a single plane of cable stays.

In 1978 Muller teamed with Gene Figg to create Figg and Muller, which designed such landmarks as the Sunshine Skyway in Tampa and Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys. "He had a unique ability to take a very complicated problem or project and reduce it to a few pages of hand calculations and sketches," says Craig Finley, founder of Finley Engineering Group, Tallahassee.

In 1988, Muller founded J. Muller International. He designed Canada’s Confederation Bridge and Hawaii’s H3 Windward Viaduct and developed the channel bridge method and post-tensioned steel bridges.