113 years ago today, on November 14, 1912 (October 6, 1912 lunar calendar), Chinese structural engineer Lin Tongyan was born. Lin Tongyan (November 14, 1912 -) was born in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China, the fourth child in his family (of 11 in total), and later grew up in Beijing. His father was a judge of the Supreme Court of the Republic of China at the time. He did not officially receive school education until the age of 11. At the age of 14, he entered the Tangshan Institute of Technology of Jiaotong University (now Southwest Jiaotong University) with the first place in mathematics and the second place in other subjects. At the age of 19 (1931), he received a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. He then went to the University of California, Berkeley, California, USA to study for a master's degree in civil engineering. In 1933, he obtained a master's degree. After returning to China, Lin Tongyan worked in the Ministry of Railways as the chief engineer of bridges for the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway, supervising the construction of more than 1,000 bridges along the railway. And the chief engineer of the Industrial and Information Corporation and the director of the Taiwan Sugar Railway. In 1946, he was hired by the University of Berkeley to work as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He retired in 1976 to focus on his civil engineering firm established in 1954, T.Y. Lin International. He also established T.Y. LinChina in 1992 to focus on civil engineering in the Chinese mainland. In 1996, he was elected as a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Lin Tongyan died at the age of 91 at his home in El Salido due to a heart attack. Comments: He was awarded the "National Science Award" by President Reagan in 1986.