April 3 (UPI) — Google is celebrating the 88th birthday of Fazlur Rahman Khan, the structural engineer who designed the Sears Tower, (now known as the Willis Tower), in Chicago. His daughter, Yasmin Sabina Khan, wrote of his accomplishments for Google and the doodle was drawn by Lydia Nichols.
Khan was born in East Bengal, British India, which became East Pakistan and then Bangladesh. He came to the United States for his graduate studies and worked at Chicago design office Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, where he began his work on designing skyscrapers.
The structural engineer created the “trussed tube” structural system for Chicago’s 100-story John Hancock Center and in 1971 he began designing the 108-story Sears Tower — which was the “world’s tallest” for the next 22 years — using his “bundled tube” technique. The tower is 1,450-feet tall.
He was named Construction’s Man of the year by Engineering News-Record In 1972.
Khan died of a heart attack at age 52 while on a trip in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1982.
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