About

Pierre Danel was born on October 19, 1902 in Roubaix, France, and passed away on September 13, 1966 in Grenoble, France. He graduated from Ecole Centrale in Paris and entered the hydraulic laboratories Neyret-Beylier and Piccard-Pictet in Grenoble in 1928, the cradle of the later SOGREAH laboratories. Danel headed these laboratories from 1933 and in parallel was a Lecturer at Grenoble’s Ecole Polytechnique.

Career Type:

Organization Type:

Expertise Fields/Interests:

Major Achievements:

Danel was an expert in agricultural hydraulics and in addition involved in the design of hydraulic machinery. He founded the new series of the French hydraulics journal La Houille Blanche in 1945, a journal that continued after his death until today as one of the outstanding national hydraulics journals. Danel was elected president of IAHR in 1955 and held the office until 1960. He was actively involved in the foundation of new IAHR sections, such as of hydraulic machinery and cavitation in 1955, of maritime hydraulics in 1957, and of glaciology in 1959. Danel was a great organizer of national and international activities, and less a researcher, therefore. During the 1957 Lisbon Congress, Danel proposed special symposia during the conventional congresses as an additional platform for exchanging ideas among specialists. A number of these symposia were later organized by Société Hydrotechnique de France SHF during national conferences with an international participation.