Robert Le Ricolais (La Roche-sur-Yon (Vendée) 30 October 1894 – Neuilly-sur-Seine, 4 June 1977),[1][2] was a French engineer considered one of the creators of the spatial structure principle, based on mathematical logic and observation of nature.
[4] The son of a lawyer and a housemaker, Le Ricolais obtained his Bachelor of Science after secondary studies in Angoulême and enrolled at the Sorbonne in 1912.
[2][5] He lived in Paris from 1918 to 1931 before moving to Nantes where he worked in hydraulic companies for thirteen years, and deepened his knowledge in the field of structures.
[5] Le Ricolais came to national attention in 1935, at the age of forty, with the publication of "Les Tôles Composées et leurs applications aux construction métaliques légères" ("Composite Sheets and their Applications to Lightweight Metal Structures") a paper in which he introduced the concept of thin structural walls applied to the building domain,[7] which he also applied to the aeronautical sector.
[2] After the war, he resigned from his position at Air Liquide, where he was the deputy director of the Western agency, and started working as a consulting engineer.
[13][11] Of the major structures he designed applying the "Aplex" patent, only the administrative garage in Yaoundé, Cameroon, built in 1947 and covering 3400 square meters, remains today.
[11] In 1965, the Palais de la Découverte held the exhibition "Le Ricolais, Espace, Mouvement et Structures" during which he gave a lecture titled In Search of a Mechanics of Forms on July 7, 1965.
[15] According to Peter McCleary, scholar and expert on his work "Le Ricolais was a well-rounded person who, despite his official departmental associations, also enjoyed the humanities and arts.
"[15] For this scholar "[Le Ricolais'] major influence derives from publications on his experimental structures and his 'way of thinking' during twenty years of research at the University of Pennsylvania".
[19][20] Robert Le Ricolais, Les Tôles composées et leurs applications aux structures métalliques légères, Bulletin de la Société des ingénieurs civils de France n°5-6, 1935 Robert Le Ricolais, Les tôles composées et leurs applications à la construction aéronautique (Revue), Paris, Gauthier-Villars, coll.