About

Wolmar Knut Axel Fellenius was born on September 10 in Viksberg, Sweden, and passed away on September 2, 1957 in Stockholm. He graduated as a civil engineer from the Stockholm Technical University in 1898 and then was a building inspector and chief of the Gothenburg harbor department until 1911. After having lectured there at the Chalmers Technical Institute from 1906 to 1911, he was appointed professor of hydraulics at the Royal Technical University of Stockholm in 1911. Fellenius founded there a hydraulics laboratory in the 1920s, and all through his career he remained a consultant as well. He retired as a professor in 1942.

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All through his professional career, Fellenius was an active civil engineer in particular with projects in harbor design, concerns in fisheries and in coastal engineering. He is remembered by the Fellenius method as applied to the stability of embankments by a graphical approach. He is considered a founder of soil mechanics, together with Karl Terzaghi (1883-1963) and Hans-Detlef Krey (1866-1928). Fellenius had leadership in the organization of associations, given that he presided over the Division of Technical Education of the Swedish Society of Engineers, and in the 1920s over its Highway Constructions and Hydraulics Division. Fellenius was IAHR president from 1935 to 1948 when the third IAHR Congress was held in Stockholm. He was an Honorary Citizen of Karlsruhe Technical University from 1921, and a Honorary Doctor of Darmstadt Technical University from 1936.